Later Novels and Other Writings begins with The Lady in the Lake (1943).
Written during the war, the story takes Marlowe out of the seamy L.A.
streets to the deceptive tranquility of the surrounding mountains, as the
search for a businessman's missing wife expands into an elegy of loneliness
and loss. The darker tone typical of Chandler's later fiction is evident in
The Little Sister (1949), in which an ambitious starlet, a blackmailer, and
a seemingly naive young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, are the key players
in a plot that provides fuel for a bitter indictment of Hollywood and
Chandler's most savage portrayal of his adopted city. The Long Goodbye
(1953), his most ambitious and self-revealing novel, uncovers a more
anguished resonance in the Marlowe character, in a plot that hinges on the
betrayal of friendship and the compromises of middle age. Playback (1958),
written originally as a screenplay, is Chandler's seventh and last novel. A
special feature of this volume is Chandler's long-unavailable screenplay
for the film noir classic Double Indemnity (1944), adapted from James M.
Cain's novel. Supplementing the volume, and providing a more personal
glimpse of Chandler's personality, are a selection of essays - including
The Simple Art of Murder, in which Chandler muses on his pulp roots and
on the special qualities of his hero and style - and eleven letters that
range wittily and often sardonically over the worlds of writing,
publishing, and filmmaking.