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Killer in the Rain

First edition of Raymond Chandler's Killer in the Rain ¹

Raymond Chandler; Philip Durham

First edition. 8vo. Pp. xii, 332. Publisher's red boards lettered and ruled in gilt to spine. Jacket design by John Andrew (21s. net price to front flap). With an introduction by Philip Durham of UCLA, where a major Chandler collection now resides. Precedes the Houghton Mifflin U.S. edition by about six months.
Superb copy.
Collects eight short stories, which contained the seeds of Chandler's early Philip Marlowe novels. Five stories appear here for the first time in book form. In addition to the title story, the volume includes: Bay City Blues; No Crime in the Mountains; Mandarin's Jade; The Lady in the Lake; Try the Girl; The Curtain; and The Man Who Liked Dogs.
Chandler nursed a lifelong fascination for the West Coast underworld argot, which he reproduced with remarkable fidelity in his apprenticeship years in the 1930s contributing to pulp magazines, such as Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Story. He refused to have them reprinted during his lifetime, as he felt both plots and characters had become "cannibalized" in the process of writing three of his full-length novels – namely, The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Lady in the Lake.
[Bruccoli A14.1.a]
edition
first edition
format
hardback
publisher
Hamish Hamilton
published in
London
publication year
1964
ISBN
not assigned
genre
mystery & thriller
language
English
binding style
cloth
binding state
original binding
condition  . . .
fine
of jacket
fine
GBP£ ​0.00
EUR€ ​0.00
USD$ ​0.00
ref.YL6 Q7R