Killer in the Rain

First edition. 8vo. Pp. xii, 332. Publisher's red boards lettered and ruled in gilt to spine. Jacket design by John Andrew (21s. net price to front flap). With an introduction by Philip Durham of UCLA, where a major Chandler collection now resides. Precedes the Houghton Mifflin U.S. edition by about six months.

Mild foxing to top and fore-edge, lightly soiled to d/w lower panel, else Fine.

Collects eight short stories, which contained the seeds of Chandler's early Philip Marlowe novels. Five stories appear here for the first time in book form. In addition to the title story, the volume includes: Bay City Blues; No Crime in the Mountains; Mandarin's Jade; The Lady in the Lake; Try the Girl; The Curtain; and The Man Who Liked Dogs.

Chandler nursed a lifelong fascination for the West Coast underworld argot, which he reproduced with remarkable fidelity in his apprenticeship years in the 1930s contributing to pulp magazines, such as Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Story. He refused to have them reprinted during his lifetime, as he felt both plots and characters had become "cannibalized" in the process of writing three of his full-length novels – namely, The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Lady in the Lake.

[Bruccoli A14.1.a]