In The Simple Art of Murder, which was prefaced by the famous Atlantic Monthly essay of the same name, noir master Raymond Chandler argues the virtues of the hard-boiled detective novel, and this collection, mostly drawn from stories he wrote for the pulps, demonstrates Chandler’s imaginative, entertaining facility with the form. Included are the classic stories “Spanish Blood,” Pearls Are … Blood,” Pearls Are a Nuisance,” and “Guns at Cyrano’s,” among others.
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Overall, I liked it. It was worth reading if only for Chandler’s essay of the same title of this collection of short stories published by the Atlantic in 1950. It appears at the beginning of this book.
I am fan of this style of writing. Some may call it pulp fiction. Perhaps, hard-boiled? I suppose it is similar to comparing bare knuckle fighting …
The book has been a must-read, for some decades. I believe this is over by now, but it sure helped to understand that author. More important though, some works blend the art of entertaining with the process of profiling ourselves, as authors, and the spread of useful information (education): A way to be more than the next egomaniac, oft …