Raymond Thornton Chandler started writing fiction in middle-age, out of economic necessity, after being fired from his job. Despite his late start and relatively brief career, Chandler's influence on detective fiction was seminal. He and fellow writer Dashiell Hammett generally are seen as the Romulus and Remus of the hard-boiled detective subgenre. Hammett's experience as a Pinkerton detective provided him with material very different from that of the genteel murder mystery imported from England. Chandler, who cut his teeth on the Black Mask school of "tough-guy" fiction, from the outset shunned the classical mystery for a type of story truer to the violent realities of twentieth-century American life. As he said, his interest was in getting "murder away from the upper classes, the weekend house party and the vicar's rose garden, and back to the people who are really good at it."

Chandler's education...