No sooner has the detective discovered that the daughter is being drugged and persuaded to pose for pornographic pictures than the book dealer who’s been peddling the porn is shot dead in his own home. It soon becomes apparent that it all revolves around the millionaire’s wayward younger daughter and her wild and excessive lifestyle. Our nameless hero is hired by a millionaire to find the man who is blackmailing the family and send him on his way. It’s not always easy to read Killer in the Rain if you’re familiar with The Big Sleep, because your memory keeps filling in little details that aren’t actually relevant to this version of the story so it’s unfair to judge the short story as being in the same canon as the full length novel that it spawned. Add to that the fact that an expanded version of Killer in the Rain makes up the first half of The Big Sleep and you’d probably find it difficult to imagine him being anyone else. He talks like Marlowe, he acts like Marlowe and he reacts like Marlowe. The private detective in the first story, Killer in the Rain, goes unnamed throughout, but to all intents and purposes it’s Philip Marlowe. Although they don’t feature the iconic Philip Marlowe, many of the concepts were recycled by Chandler in his later and more famous novels. Killer in the Rain is a collection of early short stories by Raymond Chandler from the pulp crime magazines Black Mask and Dime Detective Magazine.
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