博客來一代偵探小說大師雷蒙．錢德勒重要作品，包括《湖中女子》、《小妹》、《漫長的告別》以及告別長篇《重播》
Creator of the famous Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler elevated the American hard-boiled detective genre to an art form. Chandler's last four novels, published here in one volume, offer ample opportunity to savor the unique and utterly compelling fictional world that made his works modern classics.
THE LADY IN THE LAKE moves Marlowe out of his usual habitat of city streets and into the mountains outside of Los Angeles in his strange search for a missing woman. THE LITTLE SISTER takes Marlowe to Hollywood, where he tries to find a sweet young thing's missing brother, uncovering on the way a little blackmail, a lot of drugs, and more than enough murder. In THE LONG GOODBYE, a case involving a war-scarred drunk and his nymphomaniac wife has Marlowe constantly on the move: a psychotic gangster's on his trail, he's in trouble with the cops, and more and more corpses keep turning up. PLAYBACK features a well-endowed redhead who leads Marlowe to the California coast to solve a tale of big money and, of course, murder.
Throughout these masterpieces, Marlowe's wry humor and existential sense of his job prove yet again why he has become one of the most recognized and imitated characters in fiction.
作者簡介
雷蒙．錢德勒 (Raymond Chandler)
1888年出生於芝加哥，但因父母離異，隨母遷居倫敦，錢德勒的童年都在英國度過，大學念的是杜爾威奇(Dulwich)學院，成年之後返回美國加州定居。
錢德勒開筆甚晚，45歲才正式發表第一篇小說《勒索者不開槍》(Blackmailers Don't Shoot)，刊載於當時的廉價雜誌《黑面具》（Black Mask）上，然而，以漢密特為首加上錢德勒等人領軍的這批廉價小說，卻成功的推翻了英國古典推理對美國偵探小說的限制，開啟了美國冷硬派私探小說的傳統，後來這段歷史成了推理史上有名的「美國革命」。
錢德勒的電影劇本寫作在美國史上也有相當重要性，他曾與知名導演希區考克、比利．懷德以及勞勃．阿特曼等人合作，福克納也曾受雇將他的小說編成電影腳本。有趣的是以通俗小說起家的錢德勒，多年來其作品慢慢受到文學名家的喜愛，詩人奧登、寫作艾佛林．沃夫、格雷安．葛林、佛萊明……等人都曾公開推崇他的寫作。
錢德勒逝於1959年，畢生共完成七部長篇和二十部左右的短篇。其中以偵探馬羅為主角的系列更是他寫作的高峰。馬羅就像海明威筆下的硬漢，即便處境艱難也不肯拋開君子風度與誠實價值，每每讓讀者受到震撼。
