If you're looking for the perfect gift for yourself or some other lover of mysteries, this beautifully-made volume from the Library of America series will definitely prove that you care enough to send the very best. And if you haven't picked up The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, or The High Window recently, you'll be amazed at how well they stand up to the test of time. (A second handsome volume, Later Novels & Other Writings -- including The Long Goodbye -- is also available.)...

Prefaced by the famous Atlantic Monthly essay of the same name, in which he argues the virtues of the hard-boiled detective novel, this collection mostly drawn from stories he wrote for the pulps demonstrates Chandler's imaginative, entertaining facility with the form....

In the four long stories in this collection, Marlowe is hired to protect a rich old guy from a gold digger, runs afoul of crooked politicos, gets a line on some stolen jewels with a reward attached, and stumbles across a murder victim who may have been an extortionist....

Raymond Chandler’s first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction. THE BIG SLEEP, Chandler's first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralyzed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder. In FAREWELL, MY LOVELY, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women. In THE HIGH WINDOW, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in the tangled affairs of a dead coin collector.

In all three novels, Chandler’s hard-edged prose, colorful characters, vivid vernacular, and above all his enigmatic loner of a hero, enduringly establish his claim not only to the heights of his chosen genre but to the pantheon of literary art....

La vida de Raymond Thornton Chandler compania de petroleo, antes de convertirse en novelista de exito. Maestro de un genero como el policiaco, atrapado en el lugar comun de la evasion, hay en su serie narrativa del detective Marlowe demasiadas senales que le hacen merecedor de ocupar un lugar en la literatura en sentido estricto.«El largo adios» fue recibido de forma entusiasta por los medios desde su publicacion, primero en Inglaterra en 1953 y al ano siguiente en Norteamerica. Junto a los habituales tics satiricos y cinicos del inconfundible detective Marlowe, en los que le reconocemos como el sujeto, el heroe moral y fisico al que estamos habituados, Chandler le somete a una jugada inesperada que le metaboliza en objeto, en victima, en su busqueda irrenunciable al descubrimiento de la verdad. En el fresco social de triunfadores y marginales, de victimas y corruptos, Marlowe, y el lector que le acompane, siempre encontrara un momento para disfrutar de un cafe recien hecho o de un «gimlet», del calor humedo de los bulevares, de la silueta de las colinas...