A Mysterious Something in the Light Hits British Bookstores

Many years in the making, Tom Williams's biography Raymond Chandler: A Mysterious Something in the Light was just released in the U.K. No U.S. version yet, though you can order it from a few booksellers here stateside. Curiously, while it is available in a Kindle edition, you can't download it in the US! So, I'm still waiting on my copy.

Reviews of biographies tend to talk more about the subject's life than the biography itself, and that seems even more pronounced with reviews of a Chandler biography, since he had such a compelling and unusual life story. But, here are the few snippets from the reviews that address Williams' work itself:

"Tom Williams does not trouble us with any startlingly new conclusions but his treatment is unfussy and shows how Chandler’s 'troubled childhood, his complicated family relationships, his profound awkwardness about sex and women and his battle with alcohol all variously frustrated, coloured and fuelled his writing'". — Christopher Silvester, Express.co.uk

"Williams does not flinch from describing his subject’s faults but he lets his enthusiasm for the books shine through. He has unearthed little new material and his prose is pedestrian, but he knows the value of letting Chandler speak for himself. The nuggets from Chandler’s letters are wonderful."—Jake Kerridge, The Telegraph.

"The fascinating new biography, Raymond Chandler: A Mysterious Something In The Light by Tom Williams, which draws on many of his previously unpublished letters"--David Leaf, The Daily Mail

Site Updates

I spent a little time this weekend making updates to the site to give it a styling overhaul. The biggest changes are as follows:

• A reworking of the style sheets so that pages would render better in Internet Explorer
• An updated version of the Movies page (under Works) to match the format of the novels and add summaries to each movie
• The first half of a redesign of the Life chronology to bring its styling up to date and make it readable. I'll be adding more to the chronology over time

I've Got a Rap Sheet . . . Contribution

I recently contributed a piece on Raymond Chandler and gimlets for Jeff Pierce's blog The Rap Sheet.

Chandler Rights Changing Hands Again?

According to Variety, Coolabi is supposedly making a takeover play for Chorion, the media rights company that owns the rights to Raymond Chandler's literary estate.

Judith Freeman on Dorothy Fisher, Chandler's Paramount Secretary

Judith Freeman has a good piece in the L.A. Times about her meeting Dorothy Fisher, who (as Dorothy Gruber) was Chandler's secretary during his Paramount screenwriting years. It includes some good anecdotes about Chandler's behavior during these days.

In search of Chandler dust jackets . . .

Anna Kelly, an editorial assistant at Penguin Books UK, has an interesting blog post about trying to track down first English edition dust jackets for five of Chandler's novels, which the firm is reissuing with replicas of the original jackets.

The initial plan called for releasing four of the novels in the throwback editions: The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Little Sister, and The Long Good-bye. The Lady in the Lake was added later as it looked like they might not be able to turn up all four of the original picks, but once they did turn up all four (sort of) they decided to keep it in the run. Which means, of course, that The High Window and Playback are the ugly ducklings.

Thanks to Shane Mawe for the tip!

Eagle-eyed Chandler fan Olivier Eyquem emailed me recently to say that he had spotted an apparent cameo appearance by Raymond Chandler in Double Indemnity, the movie he co-wrote with Billy Wilder for Paramount. I went back and watched the scene a couple of times (it appears about 16 minutes into the film), and I'm convinced it's Chandler, too. What do you think?



I've not read before about Chandler making any movie cameos, but seeing is believing. Olivier has posted about the scene over on his blog (which is in French). It looks like mystery writers John Billheimer and Mark Coggins spotted the appearance not too long ago, too, and there are some more frame captures on Coggin's blog Riordan's Desk.