HINEY, TOM — Raymond Chandler a Biography

UK, Chatto & Windus. 1997. Hardcover with dust jacket, 24 Cm. Book, 310 crisp pp, photo section, 700g packed to post. Raymond Chandler is an uncensored look at the tortured man who wrote the classic mystery novels The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. There are insights into the writer's inspirations and work - as well as accounts of Chandler's battles with alcohol addiction and his friendships with Howard Hawks, "Lucky" Luciano, S. J. Perelman, and Alfred Hitchcock. This book is also the first to fully detail the significance and complexities of his thirty-year marriage to Cissy, a woman seventeen years his senior. Raymond Chandler is personal portrait of an author as extraordinary as the fiction he created - a body of work that has sold more than five million copies, been translated into twenty-five languages, and inspired countless imitators. "A discerning portrait of the creator of Philip Marlowe, the archetypal American private eye." - Newsweek review >>> Pretty extensive biography that should please any Chandler fanatics. There's extensive quotation from his letters and reviews about him. It definitely gives you a great jumping off point if you desire to dig up more information about him. Excellent/Very Good.