Before Marlowe, there was Carmady, Dalmas and Evans. Sharp-talking, fast-shooting PIs with attitude, integrity and a knack for getting mixed up in other folks' problems Sound familiar? It should. For not only did these guys pre-date Raymond Chandler's most famous creation, Philip Marlowe, they also paved the way for him, providing the literary blueprint from which he evolved. Indeed, part of their heroic legacy can be found in this collection of early short stories.
Originally published between 1935 and 1941 in pulp magazines like "Black Mask" and "Dime Store Detective," the eight stories comprising "Killer in the Rain" were later adapted and reworked by Chandler to form the basis of his novels "The Big Sleep," "Farewell My Lovely" and "The Lady in the Lake." Feeling that he had thus committed a form of creative 'cannibalism,' the author refused for them to be anthologised during his lifetime, hoping instead that they would fade from public memory. Fortunately for his fans, however, the stories (along with a fascinating introduction charting their background and transition to novel form) eventually resurfaced in this volume, first published in 1964, five years after Chandler's death. And any guilt the reader may feel about contravening the great man's wishes by daring to open its pages soon dissolves into wonder at his unfailing brilliance.
All the Chandler trademarks are there. Complex, tormented protagonists like the lovesick murderer Steve Skalla in "Try the Girl," and the doomed drunk Helen Matson in "Bay City Blues." Exquisitely drawn minor characters like Soukesian the Psychic ("Mandarin's Jade"), General Winslow ("The Curtain") and the usual array of gun-toting thugs, each with his own idiosyncrasies and personality defects. The sprawling city of L.A. - one minute dark with menace, the next bleached bright and beautiful - less a backdrop than a character in its own right.
There's crazy, twisted plots to make you gasp, and dialogue so sharp it hurts. There's insight upon unflinching insight into the futility of the human condition. Each and every story simmers with sleaze, violence, corruption and greed - not to mention enough drugs and hard liquor to fell a herd of stampeding wildebeest - but somehow, despite it all, the prose reverberates with a certain kind of (cynical) lyricism. And this, in my opinion, is what distinguishes Chandler's writing from that of his more hardboiled contemporaries. Even a fleeting observation can become something infinitely meaningful: "A cigarette girl with a tray the size of a five-pound candy box came down the gangway. She wore feathers in her hair, enough clothes to hide behind a three-cent stamp, and one of her long, beautiful, naked legs was gilded and the other was silvered. She had the cold, disdainful expression of a dame who is dated so far ahead that she would have to think twice before accepting a knockdown to a maharajah with a basket of rubies under his arm" ("Bay City Blues"). Poetry!
Because Raymond Chandler wrote crime fiction, a genre traditionally not embraced with open arms by purveyors of so-called 'serious literature,' his status as one of the 20th century's greatest and most influential writers has always been subject to some dispute. Like the rest of his oeuvre, however, "Killer in the Rain" provides ample evidence that there is simply no room for doubt. The man was an artist.
