A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler

The life of Raymond Chandler has long been obscured by secrets and half-truths as deceptive as anything in his novel The Long Goodbye. Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives, Tom Williams casts a new light on this mysterious writer, a man troubled by loneliness and desertion. It was only during middle age, after his alcoholism wrecked a lucrative career as an oilman, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. And his legacy—the lonely, ambigu…