Louis Clyde Stoumen

Raymond Chandler's first novel, published in 1939, introduces the now-immortal Philip Marlowe, archetypal hard boiled detective and weary knight of the seamy side of the City of Angels in the 1930s. Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care...