Some critics have expressed doubts that Chandler was as inventive a plotter as some other crime fiction writers. In a letter from 1957—at around the time he was finishing Playback, Chandler admitted: "I'm a good dialogue writer, but not a good constructionist." Whether or not this self assessment is valid is debatable. For example, it may take Playback readers a while to realize that the real target of Mitchell's blackmail is not Betty but Clark Brandon, which suggests that Chandler may be a more intricate constructionist than he realized. What is not open to debate is that the author had a keen eye for image and an unerring ear for language.

Born July 23, 1888, in Chicago, Illinois, but raised and educated in England, Chandler acknowledged: "I had to learn American just like a foreign language. To learn it I had to study and analyze it. As a result...