A Mysterious Something in the Light

June 10, 2013
In this immersive biography of novelist Raymond Chandler, who helped define the detective fiction genre, first-time author Williams pieces together numerous interviews, letters, and articles to offer a remarkably detailed portrait of the famously hard-boiled writer. Chandler’s father was abusive and an alcoholic, two qualities that had a lasting impact on the writer. Philip Marlowe, Chandler’s iconic character, was a drinker (as was Chandler himself), and the abuse his mother suffered at the hands of his father inspired a chivalrous streak displayed in fiction as well as real life. Williams spends the most time on Chandler’s early writing, sharing passages from stories and poems, as well as insight into the writer’s process that yielded classics like The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Chandler fans will find discussions of the minutiae of these novels to be illuminating; those with a more casual interest will likely skip ahead to read about the writer’s tumultuous relationship with Hollywood, including spats with directors Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. Meticulously annotated and researched, and written with a tangible fondness, it’s hard not to appreciate Williams’s efforts. Still, the book may be too myopic for most fans of crime writing. 25 b&w photos. Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Co.

June 15, 2013
The peripatetic, disordered life of the creator of private eye Philip Marlowe. First-time author Williams structures his text fairly conventionally. It begins in 1913, when 25-year-old Chandler arrived in Los Angeles, where he would later set loose Marlowe to roam as a knight errant; then it retreats to Chandler's birth in Chicago and proceeds steadily forward from there to his death from pneumonia and alcohol-related issues in 1959. Williams spent six years doing in-depth research; among the valuable material on Chandler's early history is a revealing account of his years in Ireland and England with his mother. This realistic, at times unflattering portrait shows the conflicted Chandler often drinking too much and sometimes seeking sex outside his marriage (wife Cissy was 18 years his senior). Williams, to his credit, neither defends nor excuses Chandler for these failings, nor for the uncomfortable words he wrote about gays, women and African-Americans. Using Chandler's correspondence and papers, the biographer describes his generally successful career in Hollywood (including a dust-up with Hitchcock) and takes us through the creation and reception of his major stories and novels, from The Big Sleep in 1939 to The Long Goodbye in 1953. He disintegrated when Cissy died in 1954, drinking ever more heavily and pursuing women ever more recklessly. His behavior, Williams suggests, stemmed from the fear that he would never break free from Marlowe and become the writer he'd hoped to be. There are some minor omissions: A brief afterword lists the films made from Chandler's works (Williams thinks Robert Altman's take on The Long Goodbye will endure) but does not mention that Robert B. Parker completed Chandler's unfinished Poodle Springs (1989) and wrote yet another Marlowe novel (Perchance to Dream, 1991), nor does it note Chandler's two volumes in the Library of America series. Nonetheless, this is a thorough assessment of a talented, troubled writer whose obsessions fed his work and confounded his life. A cleareyed, compassionate biography.

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