"With his classic novels and stories featuring the hardboiled private detective Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler transformed the detective story and became one of the most iconic and imitated writers of the twentieth century. But despite the fame he attained through best-selling books such as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, as well as the screenplay for such groundbreaking film noir as Double Indemnity, he remained an intensely private man throughout his life. As he lived a quiet existence darkened by his wife's recurring illnesses and his struggles with alcoholism, Chandler's letters were his sole connection to his friends, fans and publishers - and fellow writers from Ian Fleming to Somerset Maugham." "In The Raymond Chandler Papers, Chandler biographers Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane bring together a new selection of his correspondence - much of it never before made public - that reveals all aspects of his powerful personality, artistic sensibility, and broad intellectual curiosity." --Book Jacket.