This definitive omnibus of Chandler's short fiction, prefaced by John Bayley's suavely general, very English introduction, makes previous collections look downright niggardly. In addition to the eight stories of Killer in the Rain (1964), which Chandler "cannibalized" (his term) for The Big Sleep , Farewell, My Lovely , and The Lady in the Lake , and the 13 non-cannibalized stories in the Library of America Stories and Early Novels (1995), it includes "The Pencil"—Chandler's last story, and practically the only one that stars Philip Marlowe and not some earlier version of the peerless shamus like Mallory, Ted Carmady, or John Dalmas—and three never-before-reprinted tales. It's easy to see why "The Bronze Door" (1939), "Professor Bingo's Snuff" (1951), and "English Summer" (1974) have sunk into obscurity, since all three are atypical—the first a supernaturally-tinged fable of alternative lives, the second an equally paranormal account of a cuckold who takes advantage of an invisibility potion to take control, the third a romantic idyll that ends in murder—though all are full of characteristically male dreamers and female schemers. Fans inadvisedly imbibing the rest of the collection nonstop will see Chandler's rapid evolution from the violent fumblings of "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" to the pulp formula mastery of "Goldfish" to the matchless urban poetry of "Red Wind" and "I'll Be Waiting." Chandler thought of himself as a novelist who also wrote short fiction, and this collection won't change that verdict. But having all 25 of the world's greatest pulp writer's checkered, indispensable stories available in a single volume is a pleasure long overdue.

Starred Review "The front of her dress was a sudden welter of blood. Her eyes opened and shut, opened and stayed open." That sentence, from Raymond Chandler's 1935 story "Spanish Blood," says volumes about the history of mystery fiction. Death was mostly an offstage plot device in the works of Agatha Christie and other English authors during the so-called Golden Age of the detective story; American pulp writers made guns and blood their stock-in-trade, but most of them knew little about style, and their work didn't circulate much beyond bus stations and drugstores. Then Chandler, getting his start in those same pulps, began using phrases such as "sudden welter of blood," and it was only a matter of time before the literary world took notice. This landmark collection, gargantuan in both size and significance, brings together for the first time all of Chandler's short fiction, the raw material from which he later fashioned all his celebrated novels, from The Big Sleep through The Long Goodbye. Part of the fascination in reading these seminal tales is to encounter bits and pieces of the novels turning up in all sorts of places: the fabled opening scene of The Big Sleep, Marlowe with General Sternwood in the greenhouse, takes place in one story, while the later scene involving Sternwood's thumb-sucking daughter, Carmen, and her adventures with a pornographer becomes the centerpiece in an entirely different story. To read these 25 stories, 22 of which were originally published in the 1930s, consecutively is to watch Chandler's craft develop: the move from third to first person; the fascination with atmosphere and mood; the outrageous similes; the liberating focus on his detective's thoughts and feelings; and, of course, the relish with which he describes violence and death, utterly realistic yet flamboyantly stylized. And, yet, one can also see Chandler chomping at the bit of the short form, the plot demands of the mystery formula keeping him from his real interests: character and place. Only Chandler fanatics will want to read every word of this encyclopedic volume, but anyone with any interest in the history of hard-boiled fiction should sample its groundbreaking wares. A major publishing event.