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In one of these letters he even discusses fellow hardboiled writer Ross Macdonald's (here called John, as he hadn't changed his name yet) The Moving Target, which cribbed some ideas from The Big Sleep and Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man.
The novels themselves? Classic Chandler - enough said. If you'd like to know why you should expect the best in hardboiled detective fiction, well, read 'em all, or at least one. (If you're planning on that course of action, try the first in the series, The Big Sleep, included in a similar volume called Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories/The Big Sleep/Farewell, My Lovely/The High Window.)
Bottom line, this is required reading for anyone who won't read just anything but at the same time doesn't limit themself to Anna Karenina.

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Though he appears, on the surface, to be little more than a nosy, bumbling "private dick," his successful unraveling of a closely interwoven crowd of crooks proves, as one suspect cop observes, that Marlowe "played...smart....You must got something we wasn't told about." (228) Keeping his cards in his hand for most of the noel, Chandler shows that both he and Marlowe are "smart," leading the reader on a circuitous trail that shakes out only in the novel's final pages.
The story begins with a happenstance encounter between Marlowe and an ex-con called "Moose" Malloy. Marlowe cannot resist pursuing the suspicious-looking hulk of a man and soon finds himself both running after and from a variety of shady characters. In the course of his private investigations, Marlowe survives several near brushes with death, getting "sapped" by thugs near the novel's start, pumped full of opium in a suspicious hospital-like place, and stealthily boarding a closely guarded gambling boat to confront an infamous mobster in the middle of the night. In the end, Marlowe succeeds at untangling the web of murders and crimes that keep him running throughout the novel, but not before giving the reader the run-around as well. Chandler's smart, articulate prose lends itself well to the captivating story and intriguing characters that combine to make this a must-read for fans of detective fiction.


This particular collection, rightly, combines Chandler's first three novels with the best of his earlier short stories, recognizing the thematic unity in those works. (Good as it is, "The Lady In The Lake" demands to be treated separately from Chandler's earlier efforts.)
Chances are, if you're reading this, you've read most, if not all, of Chandler's Phillip Marlowe novels. You may as well have read many, if not all, of the short stories presented here. But have you read these novels, and these short stories, TOGETHER in this context? Likely not. But you deserve to.
In the short stories, for example, there are protagonists named John Evans, Ted Carmody and Tony Resick (the last two of which, interestingly, inhabit locations which were most likely Los Angeles' Hotel Mayfair, with which Chandler had more than a nodding familiarity). And when, in Chandler's writings, did they meld themselves into what would be his penultimate creation, Phillip Marlowe?
And at which point did Chandler begin to write, as fellow writer Ross McDonald termed it, "like a slumming angel . . ."? The answers to both questions may well lie here, in this collection.
Pick up this collection! Read it! Discover the material anew!


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Bottom line: LOA has redeemed itself for it's blatant lies on the Dust Jacket of "Stories and Early Novels" (see my review "Incomplete and Misleading")By the way, no one has ever explained why they neglected to include Chandler's last complete Marlowe story, "The Pencil".
I will be writing other reviews of Chandler collections undwe the clever title of "The Simple Art of Editing" and let me assure you that they do not hold up as well as this LOA masterpiece.