Both these American master storytellers principally write about Los Angeles and its boulevards of broken dreams and toil in the so-called hardboiled streets. Their respective heroes, Philip Marlowe and Harry Bosch act as avenging knights decades apart but the sense of anger at corruption and the spread of evil is the same, alongside carefully-tuned plots and galleries of wonderful characters, full of colour and pathos.
Chandler created the model for modern crime fiction, Connelly takes over the relay and brought it into the 21st century.
Recommended:
Raymond Chandler -THE LITTLE SISTER. Not his most known, but a fascinating and tender glimpse into the intricate webs of deception that bring people together and then destroy them.
Michael Connelly - THE POET. A stand-alone novel that does not feature Harry Bosch, but follows a group of FBI agents on the trail of a terribly devious serial killer. A breathless masterpiece.
Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or least ways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable though it's not long before he wishes he wasn't so sweet. You see, Orrin's trail leads Marlowe to luscious movie starlets, uppity gangsters, suspicious cops and corpses with ice picks jammed in their necks. When trouble comes calling, sometimes it's best to pretend to be out.
Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.
