Raymond Chandler & A Piece of Work

While writing my latest novel, A Piece of Work, one of the writers from who I sought inspiration was Raymond Chandler. For me Chandler is one of the great  detective/fiction authors of the hard boiled and noir style. Chandler is famous for his detective Philip Marlowe who appeared in seven novels.

I love Marlowe's commentaries on people and things, especially the ones that were tinged with derision.

“She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tire, rim and all.” 

“There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.” 

“From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.” 

These somewhat cynical comments suited my drug-addicted protagonist Lee Linville. Chandler inspired me to write lines like:

"The dark-haired woman who sat behind the dirty glass was young, but looked all washed out. Her makeup, that should have enhanced her looks, only made her look grotesque. Her face was pale and looked like a slice of stale bread."

"On his head sat a grey Porkpie hat with a pale blue band. From the corner of his mouth hung a smouldering Robert Burns cigar. He looked like a respectable bum.

"She looked at Lee with tired eyes that said her life had not turned out the way she'd hoped. Hell, who's life ever does?"

In The Simple Art of Murder, Chandler wrote of his detective:  "But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this type of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. . . .  He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."

Where as Chandler's Marlowe is the archetype detective; tough, brave and honest. Marlowe is brutally honest about American society in the 1940s and 50s. 

“Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city"

“Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted.” 


My anti-hero Lee Linville is not tough or brave or even that honest. Lee is deep into drugs and depression due to his past. In 1959 Lee is living in New York City and is contemptuous of modern society. 

"Linville watched Fullerton walk away and out of the diner. The lawyer joined the teaming masses on the street and blended into them, becoming one with them. One big mass like some giant organism that pulsated and moved along, picking some up and dropping some off, like any living thing that took in food and shitted it out. The thought of it made Lee sick."

"Traffic on the street was heavier now. Street lights told people when to stop and when to move. Pedestrians choked the street and traffic choked the pedestrians. Soon it would be unbearable: the crowds, the noise, the deadpan expressions, the soulless eyes that took in nothing and gave nothing back. Lee knew that look. It was the look of a junkie."

 Stephen Gaspar's books can be found on Amazon