The Simple Art of Murder
by. Houghton Mifflin, $3.50.
A dozen novelettes reprinted from the pulps (and Satevepost) by the maestro of the hard-boiled murder mystery, plus Chandler’s Atlatic essay on literary mayhem. Philip Marlowe shares the honors here with two other shamuses, two hotel dicks, and a gentleman detective who talks like an Oxford don but is awfully tough and very cagey. This 500 pages’ worth of Chandler is a choice package of sexy redheads and mean killers, fast gunplay, corpses whichever way you look, and a vernacular which puckers the senses like an electric shock.