Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe ( MAR-loh) is a fictional private detective created by Raymond Chandler who was characteristic of the hardboiled crime fiction genre. The genre originated in the 1920s, notably in Black Mask magazine, in which Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op and Sam Spade first appeared. Though Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep (1939), Chandler's early short stories, published in pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective since 1933, starred various prototype detectives with names like "Carmady" and "John Dalmas."

Several of the aforementioned short stories, when republished in the collection The Simple Art of Murder (1950), changed the names of the protagonists to Philip Marlowe (these are not to be confused with the stories Chandler directly combined and expanded – "cannibalized" – into Marlowe novels, which were generally blocked from any republication during his lifetime, and saw no text alterations in later republications).

Underneath the wisecracking, hard-drinking, tough 'private eye' exterior, Marlowe is quietly contemplative, philosophical and enjoys chess and poetry. While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is not fooled by the genre's usual femmes fatales, such as Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep. Chandler's treatment of the detective novel exhibits an effort to develop the form. His first full-length book, The Big Sleep, was published when Chandler was 51; his last, Playback, when he was 70. He wrote seven novels in the last two decades of his life. An eighth, Poodle Springs, was completed posthumously by Robert B. Parker and published years later.