RAYMOND THORNTON CHANDLER (1888 - 1959) was the master practitioner of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Although he was born in Chicago, Chandler spent most of his boyhood and youth in England, where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a freelance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, Chandler served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC). In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing fiction, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. Chandler’s detective stories often starred the brash but honorable Philip Marlowe (introduced in 1939 in his first novel, The Big Sleep) and were noted for their literate presentation and dead-on critical eye. Never a prolific writer, Chandler published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. Some of Chandler’s novels, like The Big Sleep, were made into classic movies that helped define the film noir style. In the last year of his life he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in La Jolla, California, on March 26, 1959.
ARVIND ETHAN DAVID is a Stoker Award nominated graphic novelist who has also written chart-topping Audiodramas (The Crimes of Dorian Gray, Earworms), television (Anansi Boys) and plays (The Boy with Wings). Arvind is also a producer of film and theater, including the Emmy & Grammy award winning musical Jagged Little Pill. Arvind’s career started when he adapted the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency as his college play and Adams came to see it. Years later, Arvind brought Dirk Gently to a global audience as a Netflix/AMC TV series.
