A Mysterious Something in the Light

Drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives, this biography casts a new light on Raymond Chandler, one of the most mysterious of writers. The man revealed was troubled by loneliness and desertion from an early age—experiences that informed his writing as much as they scarred his life. The bleak picture details the collapse of his parents’ marriage, and the relocation of Chandler and his mother to...
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Drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives, this biography casts a new light on Raymond Chandler, one of the most mysterious of writers. The man revealed was troubled by loneliness and desertion from an early age—experiences that informed his writing as much as they scarred his life. The bleak picture details the collapse of his parents’ marriage, and the relocation of Chandler and his mother to Ireland, and later London, due to his father’s alcohol-fueled violence. In his 20s, he returned to the United States and he met his one great love, Cissy Pascal, a married woman 18 years his senior. Only during middle age, after his own alcoholism dissolved a lucrative career as an oilman, did Chandler turn to crime fiction, although his success proved bittersweet. His literary obsession, ambition, and suicidal turn after Cissy’s death combined to prevent him from living up to the promise of his first novels. This long-awaited biography shadows one of the true literary giants of the 20th century and considers how crime writing was raised to the level of art.

The life of Raymond Chandler has long been obscured by secrets and half-truths as deceptive as anything in his novel The Long Goodbye. Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Tom Williams casts a new light on this most mysterious of writers.

The Raymond Chandler revealed is a man troubled by loneliness and desertion from an early age. Born in Chicago in 1888, his childhood was overshadowed by the collapse of his parents’ marriage, his father’s alcohol-fuelled violence eventually forcing the boy and his doting mother to leave for Ireland and later London. But class-bound England proved stifling, and Chandler, in his twenties and eager to forge a new life, returned to the United States where—in corruption-ridden Los Angeles—he met his one great love, Cissy Pascal, a married woman eighteen years his senior.

It was only during middle age, after his alcoholism wrecked a lucrative career as an oilman, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. And his legacy—the lonely, ambiguous world of Philip Marlowe—endures, compelling generations of crime writers to follow him.

In this long-awaited new biography, Tom Williams shadows one of the true literary giants of the twentieth century and considers how crime writing was raised to the level of art.