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Simple Art of Murder (Vintage Crime)
 
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Simple Art of Murder (Vintage Crime) (Paperback)

by Raymond Chandler (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.00
Price: £7.94 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

Simple Art of Murder (Vintage Crime) + Playback + Killer in the Rain: "The Man Who Liked Dogs"; "The Curtain"; "Try the Girl"; "Mandarin's Jade"; "Bay City Blues"; "The Lady in the Lake"; "No Crime in the Mountains": Short stories
Price For All Three: £20.26

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Product details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Books; Vintage Books ed edition (31 Aug 1988)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0394757653
  • ISBN-13: 978-0394757650
  • Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 12.7 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 35,269 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #4 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > C > Chandler, Raymond
    #16 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Mystery > Hard-Boiled

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Product Description

Synopsis

An essay on detective fiction accompanies eight stories about a politician's murder, a hotel detective, missing pearls, and gangsters.

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Simple Art of Murder (Vintage Crime)
39% buy the item featured on this page:
Simple Art of Murder (Vintage Crime) 4.0 out of 5 stars (2)
£7.94
Trouble is My Business
20% buy
Trouble is My Business 5.0 out of 5 stars (1)
£5.49
Playback
17% buy
Playback 3.8 out of 5 stars (4)
£5.48
Killer in the Rain: "The Man Who Liked Dogs"; "The Curtain"; "Try the Girl"; "Mandarin's Jade"; "Bay City Blues"; "The Lady in the Lake"; "No Crime in the Mountains": Short stories
16% buy
Killer in the Rain: "The Man Who Liked Dogs"; "The Curtain"; "Try the Girl"; "Mandarin's Jade"; "Bay City Blues"; "The Lady in the Lake"; "No Crime in the Mountains": Short stories 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Short stories from the creator of Phillip Marlowe., 2 Dec 1996
By A Customer
Raymond Chander fans who associate the author's name only with that of his famous creation, Phillip Marlowe, will enjoy "The Simple Art Of Murder," a collection of Chandler stories originally published in everything from "Dime Detective" magazine to "The Saturday Evening Post." These stories, in which Marlowe as we know him is nowhere to be found, trace the evolution of Chandler's distinctive style and find him experimenting with various characters and points of view. Several stories feature third-person narration, contrary to the Marlowe novels' first-person perspective, and many stories feature protagonists who are obviously Marlowe prototypes. Naturally, all of the tales feature Chandler's poetic dialogue, remarkable descriptions, and enjoyably tangled plots. Highlights of the collection include "The Simple Art of Murder," an essay by the author on the nature of mystery-writing, and the haunting "I'll Be Waiting," in which a lonely hotel detective tries to help a beautiful guest and ends up paying a dearer price than he could ever have imagined. My personal favorite among the stories is the surprisingly funny "Pearls Are A Nuisance," which proves that Chandler really did have a sense of humor. Anyone looking for a fresh perspective on one of mystery's best writers should pick up "The Simple Art Of Murder."
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Art made to look simple, 12 Nov 1998
By A Customer
The essay which gives this collection its title is the apotheosis of Chandler - the absolute distillation of the meaning of "Chandleresque" (or for that matter "Hammett-ness"). Here Chandler steps back from the creation of Noir fiction and, in a sometimes bitter or shrp way, comes down hard on the Hams and Part-timers of a literary form he believed to be worthy of elevation from the term genre.

Chandler chose to use the conventions of the Crime Novella format to his own - rather than any readership or editors - ends. Less monothematic than the given Short Story format, pre-flavoured with the expectations of the Crime buyer, the Novella and its narrow context of the stark contrasts of the Urban existence allow Chandler to define a notion of modern man and the modern morality of the individual in a socially dislocated environment - years before Welles and decades ahead of the Quention Tarantino's who currently tease us with the same issues and questions.

In "The Simple Art of Murder" the short stories and mini-novellas are sharp and compelling; in the title-giving essay, Chandler sits back and confesses to what compels him to write so. To paraphrase the author himself (speaking of Hammett for whom he had a great admiration), he took the art of murder from the counttry vicarage and "gave it back to the people on the street, to whom it really belonged anyway". Marlowe is silhouetted by his creator in his concluding idea of why a man such as him will always exist, why his morality must exist .. "down these mean streets a man must go, a man who is neither tarnished nor afraid...". Written with so much conviction that his argument stands up like a spoon in it, for this essay alone - and the future years of musing on and quoting whole tracts that will instantly lodge in your memory for ever - no-one interested in what underlies the fascination of "noir" should go down a dark alley at night without it.

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