Raymond Chandler
(born 1888, Chicago, Illinois, USA; died 1959, La Jolla, California, USA)

American Anglophile credited with reinventing the detective novel for the mythic city of 1940s Los Angeles. Chandler's seven Philip Marlowe novels refit the private eye as an urban knight errant and are characterised by their world-weary tone and surreal use of metaphor. Humphrey Bogart delivered the most enduring Hollywood version of Marlowe in The Big Sleep.