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Starring Ed Bishop as Philip Marlowe

Raymond Chandler: A BBC Radio Collection

A collection of BBC Radio dramatisations of classic Raymond Chandler novels starring Ed Bishop as detective Philip Marlowe

They never came tougher than Marlowe, a cynical, world-weary, wise-cracking shamus whose honesty in a dishonest world sent him down the mean streets again and again in search of some kind of justice. 
 
Ed Bishop stars as Philip Marlowe in these powerfully atmospheric BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of Raymond Chandler's novels. 
 
The Big Sleep 
General Sternwood's daughters came in both the colours of trouble - blonde and brunette - and they had all the usual vices. With four million dollars behind them, blackmail was only a matter of time. And blackmail can be murder. 
 
The High Window 
Linda Conquest was very tough, very kissable and very missing, along with one very valuable old coin. But soon Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. 
 
The Lady in the Lake 
Blonde, beautiful and wild, Crystal Kingsley had never been the faithful little wife. But when she goes missing for a month, and then a woman’s body surfaces in an isolated mountain lake, murder-a-day Marlowe is back in business. 
 
The Little Sister 
Marlowe is on the case of a missing brother from a two-bit Kansas town, who had the embarrassing habit of knowing guys who finished up on the wrong end of an ice-pick. Until, that is, he did too. 
 
The Long Goodbye 
Terry Lennox seemed like a nice guy. Okay, he was a drunk but maybe that could happen to anyone with too much money, too much time and a wife who played the field in a big way. Trouble was, when she ended up dead, it wasn't money that got Lennox to Mexico. It was Marlowe. 
 
Farewell My Lovely 
At six feet five, Moose Malloy is a big man who looks about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food – and about as dangerous. His girl Velma disappeared eight years ago, and now he wants to find her. 
 
Also included in a BBC Radio archive discussion, in which Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming discuss thrillers and talk about their respective heroes: Philip Marlowe and James Bond. 
 
Originally broadcast between 1977 and 1988, these dramatisations also star Don Fellows and Robert Beatty. They were adapted by Bill Morrison and produced by John Tydeman. 
 
These are archive dramatisations of the original novels published between 1939 and 1953, and the language used reflects some of the attitudes of those times.

Playback

The classic Chandler mystery - reissued now in B format

Playback is Raymond Chandler's gripping last full-length novel featuring laconic PI Philip Marlowe. 
 
'Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since' Paul Auster 
 
Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is mixing business with pleasure - he's getting paid to follow a lovely mysterious redhead called Eleanor King. And wherever Miss King goes, trouble is sure to follow. But she's easy on the eye and Marlowe's happy to do as he's told. But one dead body later and what started out as a lazy afternoon's snooping soon becomes a deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity - and murder . . . 
 
 
'Chandler grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 
 
'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times 
 
'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess

Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.

Stalking the tawdry neon wilderness of forties and fifties Los Angeles, Raymond Chandler's hard-drinking, wise-cracking Phillip Marlowe is one of the world's most famous fictional detectives. 
 
'Playback' finds Marlowe mixing business with pleasure - getting paid to follow a mysterious and lovely red-head named Eleanor King. And wherever Miss King goes, trouble seems to follow. But she's easy on the eye and Marlowe's happy to do as he's told, all in the name of chivalry, of course. But one dead body later and what started out as a lazy afternoon's snooping soon becomes a deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity - and murder . . .

Trouble is My Business

'I need a man good-looking enough to pick up a dame who has a sense of class, but he's got to be tough enough to swap punches with a power shovel.' 
 
In the first of the four cases in Trouble is My Business, Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is offered a job that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: smearing a girl who's 'got her hooks into a rich man's pup'. Before too long Marlowe's up to his neck in corpses and cops and he's taken pity on the girl. There's nothing like making trouble out of your business . . . 
 
The four novellas collected here are quintessential Raymond Chandler: slick, crystal-clear writing that pins the reader to the seat and won't let go until the last page is turned. 
 
'Age does not wither Chandler's prose' Literary Review 
 
'Chandler's prose flies off the pages like a burst from a Tommy gun. Chandler was perhaps the finest exponent of the fledgling genre now known as pulp fiction' Scottish Field 
 
'One of the greatest crime writers, who set the standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times 
 
'Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner . . . An original . . . A great artist' Boston Review 
 
'Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since' Paul Auster 
 
Discover the newest addition to the inimitable Philip Marlowe series - Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne - out 6 September 2018 in hardback and ebook from Hogarth.

In the first of the four cases in Trouble is My Business, LA PI Philip Marlowe is offered a job that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: smearing a girl who's 'got her hooks into a rich man's pup'. Before too long Marlowe's up to his neck in corpses and cops and he's taken pity on the girl. There's nothing like making trouble of your business . . . 
 
The four novellas collected here are quintessential Raymond Chandler: slick, crystal-clear writing that pins the reader to the seat and won't let go until the last page is turned.

The High Window

A CLASSIC NOVEL BY THE MASTER OF HARD-BOILED CRIME, THE HIGH WINDOW IS RAYMOND CHANDLER'S THIRD STORY FEATURING LACONIC PI PHILIP MARLOWE. 
 
'He lay crumpled on his back. Very lonely, very dead. The safe door was wide open. A metal drawer was pulled out. It was empty now. There may have been money in it once.' 
 
Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA puts cops' noses seriously out of joint. If Marlowe doesn't wrap this one up fast, he's going to end up either in jail or in a wooden box in the ground . . . 
 
'Chandler's books should be read and judged, not as escapist literature, but as works of art' W.H. Auden 
 
'Chandler grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 
 
'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times 
 
'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess

Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious

Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since

Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude

[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision

Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye

Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from the first sentence

Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . A great artist

Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959.  Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.

Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA gets cops' noses out of joint. If Marlowe doesn't wrap this one up fast, he's going to end up in jail - or worse, in a box in the ground . . .

Killer in the Rain

From the creased pages of 1930s pulp magazines Black Mask and Dime Detective come eight of Raymond Chandler's finest short stories: 
 
KILLER IN THE RAIN, THE MAN WHO LIKED DOGS, THE CURTAIN, TRY THE GIRL, MANDARIN'S JADE, BAY CITY BLUES, THE LADY IN THE LAKE and NO CRIME IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
Set against a Southern Californian backdrop, the stories are rich with suspense, violence and tragedy, and each comes laced with booze, bullets and a detective with an eye for a damsel in distress and an even keener eye for justice . . . 
 
Readers will also recognize episodes, characters and flashbacks from the Marlowe novels that made Chandler the undisputed master of his genre. 
 
'Anything he writes about grips the mind from the first sentence. It is a spare, finished performance: full of life and character: as tense as a tiger, springing into action' Daily Telegraph 
 
'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times 
 
'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess

It was in the pulp detective magazines of the 1930s that Raymond Chandler's definitive take on the hard-boiled detective story first appeared. Here then, from the well-thumbed pages of 'Black Mask' and 'Dime Detective Magazine', are eight of his finest stories including 'The Man Who Liked Dogs', 'The Lady in the Lake' and 'Bay City Blues'. Sharper than a hoodlum's switchblade, more exciting than an unexpected red-head and stronger than a double shot of whisky, they are packed full of the punchy poetry and laconic wit that makes Chandler the undisputed master of his genre.

The Long Good-bye

A classic novel by Raymond Chandler, the master of hard-boiled crime, The Long Good-Bye is the sixth novel featuring laconic PI Philip Marlowe 
 
Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. 
 
He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. 
 
Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth? 
 
'Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 
 
'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times 
 
'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel The Big Sleep in 1939. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family - and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures - is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The hard-boiled detective's iconic image burns just as brightly in Farewell My Lovely, on the trail of a missing nightclub crooner.

Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely

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