Raymond Chandler

[rich]

reiterate my recommendation for another crime writer derek raymond
whose novels are being reprinted by Melville House this fall

The mid-80s Factory series, written after years of enforced exile in
France, had none of the dull procedural characteristics of the
middlebrow crime novel that has propped up TV ratings for years. The
initial murder in The Devil's Home on Leave has such an obvious
signature that the identity of the killer is immediately revealed.
(The series' basic idea of unexplained deaths was borrowed and diluted
by the BBC's Waking the Dead.) The Raymond novels were always too
solitary and austere to get made into TV. No sidekicks. No hobbies.
Not much by way of character. Raymond's obsession was the state of
death, a constant present, subordinating and excusing the need for
niceties.

His reputation lay in proving that hardboiled fiction could be made to
work in England, leaving Morse, Midsomer Murders, Christie, PD James
et al behind. He was appreciated more in his adopted France where they
make a fetish of noir - Claude Chabrol filmed one of the Factory
books. Cook understood implicitly the dark thing that lurks at the
heart of noir, and his tone of stoicism and disdain gave the voice
authority. For all the levelling that takes place in the stories, the
patrician voice is more of a companion to the work of that other old
Etonian, Anthony Powell, than to the average English crime novel. It
was a class act, summarised by the modified beatnik look: beret,
Gauloise, everything black.

http://mhpbooks.com/book.php?id=528

rich


On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Raymond Chandler
> The Big Sleep
> (1939)
>
> http://ae-lib.org.ua/texts-c/chandler__the_big_sleep__en.htm
>