"It was about eleven o clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. "
With these words, private eye Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler s great literary creation and one of the most enduringly popular characters in American fiction, first took life seventy-five years ago. Here, for the first time in a deluxe collector s box, are all seven Philip Marlowe novels "The Big Sleep"; "Farewell, My Lovely"; "The High Window"; "The Lady in the Lake"; "The Little Sister"; "The Long Goodbye"; and "Playback" along with thirteen classic pulp stories, Chandler s brilliant screenplay for "Double Indemnity," and a selection of his revealing essays and letters: the most comprehensive edition of the hard-boiled crime fiction of Raymond Chandler ever published."