Rest in Pieces

Raymond Chandler
Created (well, fictionalized, anyway) by William Denbow, Hiber Conteris and Gaylord Larsen

Such is the myth and cultural mojo surrounding Philip Marlowe and his creator that more than one author has taken a crack at fictionalizing Raymond Chandler, and putting him to work as a detective.

In the first, and definitely the least, attempt to fictionalize Chandler, William Denbow recast Chandler as a hardboiled private eye (not unlike Marlowe) who comes to the rescue of Dashiell Hammett. Wow, just think of it--two great writers trivialized and trashed in one novel! In 101 Knights, Baker and Nietzel gleefully report that Chandler (1977) "earned the dubious distinction of being rated the worst novel among the post-1970 private eye fiction in our national survey of writers and critics." I've actually read this one, and I concur -- it stinks so bad it should come with its own smog alert.

I guess it didn't scare people off the concept, though, because in1980 P.I. writers John Stanley and Kenn Davis had Chandler dropping in to help an equally- fictionalized Humphrey Bogart play private eye when a pal is murdered in Bogart'48. Kenn Davis, of course, went on to write the acclaimed Carver Bascombe series, but Bogart'48 is definitely an acquired taste.

Uruguayan novelist Hiber Conteris fared much better several years later when he wrote an original Marlowe novel, Ten Percent of Life (1987), where Marlowe and Chandler work together to hunt the killer of Chandler's literary agent. Unique, to say the least.

In Gaylord Larsen's A Paramount Kill (1988), Raymond Chandler, working at Paramount in 1945, acts as a detective.

Perhaps the most auspicious (if not audacious) attempt to fictionalize Chandler was William F. Nolan's Black Mask Boys series, which featured Chandler and fellow pulp writers Erle Stanley Gardner and Dashiell Hammett getting into all kinds of mischief as amateur sleuths. The second book in the series, The Marble Orchard (1996), featured Chandler, and he appeared in the other two novels as a major supporting player.

In 1999, inconjunction with their new reprint of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, a collection of Marlowe stories by contemporary crime writers, ibooks posted the short story "Summer in Idle Valley" by Roger L. Simon, on their web site. A nice little story about Marlowe running into Chandler and a real-life writer pal of his...Dr. Suess.

Raymond Chandler, of course, was a real person.

NOVELS.

• Chandler (1977, by William Denbow) ...Buy this book
• Bogart'48 (1980, by John Stanley and Kenn Davis) ...Buy this book
• Ten Percent of Life (1987, by Hiber Conteris) ...Buy this book
• A Paramount Kill (1988, by Gaylord Larsen) ...Buy this book
• The Black Mask Murders (1994; by William F. Nolan). Buy this book
• The Marble Orchard (1996; by William F. Nolan; featuring Chandler). Buy this book
• Sharks Never Sleep (1998; by William F. Nolan). Buy this book

SHORT STORIES.

• "Summer in Idle Valley" (1999, ibooks, by Roger L. Simon)