Born in Nabraska of Irish Quaker parents, educated at Dulwich College, & in the `mean streets' of Los Angeles about which he wrote, Raymond Chandler-writer, oil executive, poet, recluse, charmer, gentlman, drunk-was full of contradictions as his origins. His seven Philip Marlowe stories had sold 5 million copies by the time of his death in 1059. Since the first authorised biography 20 years ago, much new material can be revealed about the man & his life. For this major new biography, Tom Hiney has had some access to unseen personal papers, as well as previously unrecorded reminiscences by those who knew him well & he vividly evokes the strange early years, brings alive the danerous glamour of the Hollywood era, & puts Chandler`s writing in the context of the crime & corruption in Prohibition LA. He gived illuminating details of friendships with Ian Fleming, Somerset Maugham, the Spenders, Alfred Hitchcock & fully records for the first time his relationship with Cissy, his wife of 30 years, 17 years his senior, & his paradoxical relations with other women.