Collecting the old master

Press, 2 June 1984, Page 20

Collecting the old master

The Chandler Collection, Volume //. By Raymond Chandler. Picador, 1983. 636 pp. $14.95. A quiz. These are the last lines of three books by the same author. “You and Capablanca, I said.” “I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say good-bye to them.” “Almost immediately the telephone started to ring again. I hardly heard it. The air was full of music.” They come respectively from: “The High Window,” “The Long Goodbye,” and “Playback,” the three books in this collection. If you recognised them, you will welcome this, the second in the Picador Chandler collection. It makes the set complete. If you did not recognise them, but liked their sound, you have a treat to come. These two volumes of the Chandler novels represent as good value as can be found these days. He is the master of the spare, lean style as his hero wisecracks his upright way through the harshly arid, amoral society of California. It is footling to go on saying such things; they have all been said before, and better, about Chandler. At what he did, he was the best, and nobody has

since matched his ear for language. If you do not already own his works “The Chandler Collection” is a fine and wellproduced way to do so. — Ken Strongman.