'I pushed her back into the house without saying anything shut the door. We stood looking at each other inside. She dropped her hand slowly & tried to smile. Then all expression went out of her white face & it looked as intelligent as the bottom of a shoe box...I lit my cigarette puffed it slowly for a moment & then asked: What are you doing here?" Before creating Philip Marlowe Raymond Chandler perfected the hardboiled private detective story in the pages of " Blask Mask" magazine
- tough spare tales of gumshoes & murder laced with a weary lyricism & deadpan laconic wit. " Killer in the Rain" is vintage Chandler the groundwork for his classic first novel " The Big Sleep"."