Tom Williams is the third and best biographer of Chandler. . . . His] packed, insightful, entertaining biography will, I feel, be the last. (London) "Times"
The life of Raymond Chandler has long been obscured by secrets and half-truths as deceptive as anything in his novel "The Long Goodbye." Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives, Tom Williams casts a new light on this mysterious writer, a man troubled by loneliness and desertion. It was only during middle age, after his alcoholism wrecked a lucrative career as an oilman, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. And his legacy the lonely, ambiguous world of Philip Marlowe endures, compelling generations of crime writers. In this long-awaited biography, Tom Williams shadows one of the true literary giants of the twentieth century and considers how crime writing was raised to the level of art."