Raymond Chandler is an uncensored look at the tortured man who wrote classic mystery novels The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Using recently uncovered archival materials, including personal papers and correspondence, biographyer Thomas Hiney vividly evokes Chandler's early years in Nebraska, his education in England and on the corrupt streets of Los Angeles, and his later years as a novelist and screenwriter in the heyday of the Hollywood studio system. Along the way, he provides illuminating insights into the writer's inspirations and work -- as well as accounts of Chandler's battles with alcohol addiction and his friendships with Howard Hawks, "Lucky" Luciano, S.J. Perelman, and Alfred Hitchcock. Hiney's biography is also the first to fully detail the significance and complexities of his thirty-year marriage to Cissy, a woman seventeen years his senior. Raymond Chandler is a personal portrait of a vulnerable and brilliant author who was as extraordinary as the fiction he created -- a body of work that has sold more than five million copies, has been translated into twenty-five languages, and inspired countless imitators. - Back cover.