The case for Raymond Chandler

The main reason Chandler is still seen by many as a sequel to Hammett is not because their books are all that similar; what Hammett fathered was not the American detective story but the American crime novel that evolved into the works of Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy. The main reason their names are linked is because, in his oft-quoted essay "The Simple Art of Murder" (also reprinted in the Vintage editions), Chandler trashed the traditional Agatha Christie-Edgar Wallace school of "The Butler Did It" mysteries while crediting Hammett with "giving murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse."

This was an odd point for Chandler to make, considering the unnecessarily complicated mystery plots he concocted. In Hammett's best-known novel, "The Maltese Falcon," there is almost no mystery to be solved and the plot is driven by the characters' unquenchable greed. In his most praised book, "Red Harvest," there is no mystery at all. But trying to decipher Chandler's plots can be like trying to interpret "Finnegans Wake." I have now read "The Big Sleep" three times, and I'm no closer to figuring out who killed who than I was before I started. I'm finally convinced that it's not really important.

What matters is not how Chandler was similar to Hammett, or, more important, to the now-forgotten hacks of the 1930s pulps, but how he was different. His prose, for instance -- the tight, swift rhythm and sentences that careen toward the end of paragraphs with a closer that stings like a slap in the face. Hacks don't write with Chandler's kind of precision. That's why they are hacks. Chandler's prose was the perfect vehicle for the suspense story that he more than anyone else perfected if not actually invented -- the kind driven more by atmosphere and the baser side of human nature than by plot.

Which is why, in the end, most of Chandler's critics tend to be either wrong or irrelevant. About 10 years ago, Martin Amis, in the New York Times, wittily dismissed Chandler as dated, and on a superficial level he was probably right. But if that really mattered, why would Chandler continue to be read more than 60 years after his first book? We shall see if Mr. Amis dates so well in a fraction of that time. (One might note that the memory of Amis' own 1997 attempt at a mystery, "Night Train," didn't survive the year it was written.) Chandler's finest biographer, Tom Hiney, put it best: "Since the 1940s, so many crime writers have emulated Chandler's style that Marlowe has been something of a clichi outside of his original stories. Within them, he has lost almost nothing at all."

In his famous put-down of detective stories, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Edmund Wilson wrote that a Chandler novel "is not simply a question of a puzzle which has been put together but of a malaise conveyed to the reader, the horror of a hidden conspiracy that is continually turning up in the most varied and unlikely forms." That was praise. His criticism was that "the explanations of the mysteries, when it comes, fails to justify the excitement produced by the elaborate build-up of picturesque and sinister language."

That's true. Chandler never understood that the intrigue aroused by a good mystery wasn't something that could be explained by a glib private dick's wrap-up monologue. That's a large part of the reason Chandler never really transcended the detective game. (Though, in fact, the only private-eye story ever able to beat that rap was "Chinatown," and as the sequel proved, that was a one-time deal.) With Chandler, it's not the solution of the murder that stays with us, but the angst produced by its seeming insolvability. ("The atmosphere in Chandler's and Hammett's stories," Borges once sniffed, "is disagreeable.")

The constant republication of Chandler's works -- the upcoming Random House "Omnibus" comes just seven years after a well-received Library of America two-volume set -- assures that Chandler, for at least a while longer, will continue to take his place on bookshelves with other quintessentially American writers such as Henry James and Edith Wharton. He is read and will continue to be read, even by readers who are smart enough to see through the tough-guy sentimentality and bargain-basement existentialism. Maybe especially by those readers. Chandler's books were more complex than the ideas they were supposed to be about, and the fears they give rise to are more troubling than the private-eye genre could contain. For that reason he will always be the favorite mystery writer of people who hate mystery novels but love mystery.

• View blog reactions