Out in the 1930s Crime Noir Night –Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art Of Murder”

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Book Review

The Simple Art Of Murder, Raymond Chandler, Vintage Crime Books, New York, 1958

In the beginning was the …idea. That is Raymond Chandler decided that he had had enough of sweet parlor talk detectives filled to the brim with logical and deductive abilities to solve the crime, the crime of murder if you need to know, before noon and then lunch at the Savoy. Or alternatively solve the dastardly deed before dinner and then reminisce over after dinner brandies and cigars at the club. Nice stuff, nice except murder and its detection is not quite so simple and linear. In fact it is messy, daunting, and done sometimes for reasons that no logical parlor think could fathom. So Chandler once he decided that he needed to air out the room tried to give us a more realistic appraisal of what solving murder (or any crime for that matter) was all about in the real world. And more importantly what kind of guy, what kind of detective guy, and it was mostly guys in his time, could measure up to such tasks.

We all know that ultimately Philip Marlowe, Philip of the seven novels (crime novels if you like but I would argue just novels and let them fall where they may in that genre), who became the proto-type, or one of the proto-types, of the hard-boiled but honest and clever detectives that dominate the genre now. Yes, Marlowe was the quintessential tough private eye but he did not spring up from nowhere and the book under review, The Simple Art Of Murder, a selection of short stories from early in the late-blooming Chandler’s literary arsenal put paid to that point. Here Chandler was working out the code that Marlowe will eventually follow, the code of the honest detective doing honest work in this wicked old world in order to bring a smidgen of justice to the cases in front of him.  To make a living as well. And not be afraid to take an occasional bong on the head or a stray slug for the good of the cause.          

We see various types of detectives from a house dick I’ll Be Waiting to semi-public detective in The King In Yellow to a light throwback parlor private eye in Pearls Are A Nuisance to the hard-boiled bong and slug tough guy in Nevada Gas all trying to work out a suitable code of honor, to not duck when danger is around, to be cynical but focused if necessary and to keep a very long distance from the long arm of the law when necessary. So if you are looking for how an iconic literary and cinematic character began in the churning process this compilation is a primer. And if that isn’t enough reason to read this book then the essay The Simple Art Of Murder where Chandler lays down the challenge (along with Dashiell Hammett) to the then current orthodoxy in detection novels (that parlor stuff mentioned above) is more than enough reason to do so.   

Oh yah, about Raymond Chandler, about the guy who wrote the book. Like I said in another review he, along with Brother Dashiell Hammett (the author of The Thin Man, and creator of The Maltese Falcon’s Sam Spade maybe the most famous tough guy detective of them all. Who, come to think of it, also had a judgment problem when it came to women, although not Hollywood women but up north in Frisco town) turned the dreary gentile drawing-room sleuth by-the-numbers crime novels that dominated the reading market back in the day on its head and gave us tough guy blood and guts detectives we could admire, could get behind, warts and all. Thanks, guys.

In Chandler’s case he drew strength from his startling use of language to describe Marlowe’s environment much in the way a detective would use his heightened powers of observation during an investigation, missing nothing. Marlowe was able to size up, let’s say, a sizzling blonde, as a statuesque, full-bodied and ravishing dame and then pick her apart as nothing but a low-rent gold-digger. Of course that never stopped him from taking a run at one or two of them himself and then sending them off into the night, or to the clink, to fend for themselves. He also knew how to blow off a small time chiseler, a grifter, as so much flamboyance and hot air not neglecting to notice that said grifter had moisture above his upper lip indicating that he stood in fear of something if only his shadow as he attempted to pull some caper, or tried to pull the wool over Marlowe’s eyes. Or noticing a frayed collar or a misshapen dress that indicated that a guy or gal was on cheap street and just maybe not on the level.  

The list of such descriptive language goes on and on -sullen bartenders wiping a random whisky glass, flighty chorus girls arm in arm with wrong gee gangsters, Hollywood starlet wannabes displaying their wares a little too openly, old time geezers, toothless, melting away in some thankless no account job, guys working out of small-time airless no front cheap jack offices in rundown building s on the wrong side of town doing, well, doing the best they can. And cops, good cops, bad cops, all with that cop air about them of seen it all, done it all blasé, and by the way spill your guts before the billy- club comes down (that spill your guts thing a trait that our Marlowe seems organically incapable of having). He had come from them, from the D.A.s office in the old days, had worked with them on plenty of cases but generally he tried to treat them like one might a snake not quite sure whether it is poisonous or not.

At the same time Chandler was a master of setting the details of the space Marlowe had to work in- the high hill mansions and the back alley rooming houses (although usually not the burgeoning ranchero middle class locales since apparently that segment of society has not need of his services and therefore no need of a description of their endless sameness and faux gentility). He has a fix on the museum-like quality of the big houses, the places like General Sternwood’s in The Big Sleep or Mrs. Murdock’s in The High Window reflecting old wealth California. And he has a razor sharp sense of the arrivisite, the new blood all splash and glitter, all high-ceiling bungalow, swimming pools, and landscaped gardens.

But where Chandler made his mark was in his descriptions of the gentile seedy places, the mansions of old time Bunker Hill turned to rooming houses with that faint smell of urine, that strong smell of liquor, that loud noise that comes with people living too close together, too close to breath their simple dreams. Or the descriptions of the back alley offices in the rundown buildings that had seen better days populated by the failed dentists, the sly repo men, the penny ante insurance brokers, the con artists, the flotsam and jetsam of the losers in the great American West night just trying to hang on from rent payment to rent payment. Those denizens of these quarters usually had a walk on role, or wound up with two slugs to the head, but Chandler knew the type, had the type down solid.

Nor was Chandler above putting a little social commentary in Marlowe’s mouth. Reflections on such topics as that very real change after World War II in the kind of swarms that were heading west to populate the American Western shore night. The rise of the corner boys hanging, just hanging, around blasted storefronts, a few breaking off into the cranked up hot rod hell’s highway night. The restless mobsters for broken back east looking to bake out in the southern California sun while taking over the vast crime markets. The wannabe starlets ready to settle for less than stardom for the right price. The old California money (the gold rush, gold coast, golden era money) befuddled by the all new waves coming in. And above all a strong sense of the rootlessness, the living in the moment, the grabbing while the grabbing was good mentality that offended old Marlowe’s honor code.

And of course over a series of books Chandler expanded the Marlowe character, expanded his range of emotions, detailed his growing world-weariness, his growing wariness, his small compromises with that code of honor that he honed back in the 1930s. Yes, Marlowe the loner, the avenging angel , the righter of wrongs, maybe little wrongs but wrongs in this wicked old world. The guy who sometimes had to dig deep in his office desk drawer to grab a shot or six of whiskey to help him think things through. Marlowe the guy of a thousand punches, the guy of a hundred knocks on the head, the guy who had taken a more than one slug for the cause, the guy who was every insurance company’s nightmare and a guy who could have used some Obamacare health insurance no questions asked . Yah, Marlowe.