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The Lady in the Lake
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  • Published: 18 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241989388
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Narrator: Scott Brick

The Lady in the Lake

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Oct 2016
EBook
1 Dec 1988
Audiobook
18 Mar 2021
Paperback
2 Feb 2012
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The classic Chandler mystery, reissued in B format

Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a quickie divorce and marry a Casanova-wannabe named Chris Lavery. Or so the note she left her husband insisted. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it he denies everything and sends the private investigator packing with a flea lodged firmly in his ear. But when Marlowe next encounters Lavery, he's denying nothing - on account of the two bullet holes in his heart. Now Marlowe's on the trail of a killer, who leads him out of smoggy LA all the way to a murky mountain lake . . .
  • Published: 18 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241989388
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Narrator: Scott Brick
Categories:

About the author

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 but moved to England with his mother when he was twelve after his parents' divorce. He was educated at Dulwich College, London and studied international law in France and Germany. He published a number of poems and essays in local papers and worked as a reporter, essayist and book reviewer before emigrating to the United States in 1912. After serving for the Canadian Army during the First World War he tried a variety of jobs before becoming a bookkeeper and auditor for Dabney Oil Syndicate. In 1924 he married Cissy Pascal. When Chandler lost his job during the Great Depression, he decided to devote himself to writing. He began writing short stories for Black Mask Magazine, the best known of the 'hard-boiled' school of pulp fiction magazines. In 1939 he published his first novel The Big Sleep to instant acclaim in Britain and the US, introducing the world to his iconic private eye, Philip Marlowe. Marlowe went on to star in almost all of Raymond Chandler's major works and with Farewell My Lovely (1940) and The Long Goodbye (1954) Chandler cemented his reputation as a giant of American popular culture and master of a style of detective fiction that would be widely admired and imitated. Chandler turned to screenwriting in 1943 with Double Indemnity and worked closely with director Billy Wilder. He continued to write for Hollywood for the next four years, during the heyday of the Hollywood studio system, receiving an Oscar nomination for The Blue Dahlia (1946). In 1946 Chandler received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for screenplay and in 1954 for novel writing. During the last year of his life he was made President of the Mystery Writers of America. He died from pneumonia in 1959.
RC

Also by Raymond Chandler

The Long Goodbye
The Lady in the Lake: Popular Penguins
Farewell, My Lovely
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep: Popular Penguins
The High Window: Popular Penguins
Farewell My Lovely: Popular Penguins
See all

Praise for The Lady in the Lake

Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious

Robert B. Parker, The New York Times Book Review

Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since

Paul Auster

Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude

Erle Stanley Gardner

[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision

Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books

Raymond Chandler is a master

New York Times

Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye

Los Angeles Times

Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from the first sentence

Daily Telegraph

Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . A great artist

The Boston Book Review

Chandler's best novels carry the crime story to levels of artistry that have rarely been matched

Daily Mail

Brilliant . . . the story travels at exhilarating speed

The Times