The International Writers Magazine: Crime

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Chandlerville • Sam North 'He was a grey man, all grey, except for his polished black shoes and two scarlet diamonds in his grey satin tie that looked like the diamonds on roulette layouts. His shirt was grey and his double-breasted suit of soft, beautifully-cut flannel. Seeing Carmen he took a grey hat off and his hair underneath it was grey and as fine as if it had been sifted through gauze. His thick grey eyebrows had that indefinable sporty look. He had a long chin, a nose with a hook to it, thoughtful grey eyes that had a slanted look because the fold of skin over his upper lid came down over the corner of the lid itself. He stood there politely, one hand touching the door at his back, the other holding the grey hat and flapping it gently against his thigh. He looked hard, not the hardness of the tough guy. More like the hardness of a well-weathered horseman. But he was no horseman. He was Eddie Mars'. Chapter X111 - The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler 1939

It is all Raymond Chandler's fault anyway.
I could have been happy with anything, but at an early age I discovered Chandlerville - Los Angeles of the late thirties and forties and it didn't let go. I looked about me in my scruffy industrial town of Grimsby and it didn't take much imagination to know that no story ever worth telling would happen here and it if did, well who the hell cared. No one.
No Grimsby detective was going to beat down the door of a glamorous society dame in my town and show her dirty pictures and demand money. (There would need to be society for a start). Sure crime happened, murders happened, there were rich and poor, but Grimsby was, well Grimsby and there is nothing romantic, nothing exciting, nothing but the void and stench of the Pyewipe factory that soaked the town in an acrid smell that dissolved the paint off cars and altered the genetic make-up of subsequent generations, including mine.

One heard about corruption in the council, scandals about whose parents were sleeping with who and once I knew someone who had shot their husband dead, but it wasn't Los Angeles and therefore it didn't count.

No one I ever saw came close to looking like a Hollywood starlet (except maybe Anne Surfleet) and British cops didn't flash guns and if there was such a thing as a Private Eye, he'd turn out to be as exciting as the man from the Pru. I tried Agatha Christie. Poirot was amusing, but her murders were all so English, her writing so damn polite. Lord Peter Whimsy was all very well and the whole basket of British Crime fiction, though popular, left me cold.

Chandler was the real thing and after him Elmore Leonard. They knew the criminal world and their words flowed. Chandler was literary, his characters were full of values, mistaken or otherwise. These people were born to be in movies and the movies loved them. Chandler was nominated for two oscars 'The Blue Dahlia'; and 'Double Indemnity'; still timeless film classics.

'Give me the money'. The motor of the grey Plymouth throbbed under her voice and the rain pounded above it. The violet light at the top of the Bullocks green-tinged tower was far above us, serene and withdrawn from the dark, dripping city. Her black-gloved hand reached out and I put the bills in it. She bent over to count them under the dim light of the dash. A bag clicked open, clicked shut. She let a spent breath die on her lips. She leant towards me. 'Leaving copper. I'm on my way. This is a get-away stake and God how I need it'. - Raymond Chandler 1939

Chandlerville is full of corrupt women, dishonourable thieves and remorseful killers, some who couldn't care either way. At the heart of it is a man, a detective who has seen all and never really surprised by anything. He doesn't get rich, he is honest despite himself and he rarely gets the girl, because he knows they are only using him to get what they want. Poor people don't really figure because poor people can't afford even him and their crimes are more passionate, police fodder 'the poor always murder those closest to them';. Rich crimes involve complex tales, terrible lies and family secrets. 'Farewell my Lovely'; and 'The Long-Goodbye' are the best of his work in my own opinion, trading on forgotten promises, weaknesses and betrayals. At the core is Philip Marlowe, ex-cop, cynical, laconic and forever associated whether he liked it or not with Humphrey Bogart rather than Robert Mitcham.

I loved the cars. Exotic names like De Soto, Packard, Cord, Studebaker, all gone now, and always Marlowes battered Plymouth Coupé. The places too. I love the empty spaces, the empty roads and the long drive to the black and white ocean where, quite often the bodies drifted out to sea. Above all, California was romantic, if a little harsh and if I could have run away from school to be there, I would have.

(Elliot Gould's Marlowe does a good cynical 70's laconic private eye in his update of The Long Goodbye (1973) and it is one of Robert Altman's best movies capturing a perfect moment in the early seventies.) We like Marlowe because he knows he's been played for a sucker by society and the cops and yet he doggedly closes in, with or without help, sometimes for a scrap of justice or personal satisfaction. He belongs to world that has completely vanished, along with Chandler, who was shaped by the times he grew up in.

This doesn't matter. I just always wish I could have been there, in LA of the late 30's and somehow been part of the scene. Chandler was a boozer, married to an older woman, lived in Santa Barbara,life was complicated but unlike some, I prefer to judge a man by his books (than his life) and his books still stand as the best and an inspiration for writing crime.

Polanski's Chinatown (1971) is the closest to a contemporary vision of Chandler's L.A.. Jack Nicholson gives the performance of his life as Jake Gittings, the Marlowe-esqe character. It is a wonderful work and a brilliant insight into the power plays in a city undergoing huge growing pains. Even better to realise that it ws based on real scandals in the water and power business. Los Angeles was, for me, a symbol for a whole American way of life and it only dawned on me slowly, that just as I had discovered it, it had vanished, subsumed by the tacky sixties and the dreadful seventies.

Chandlerville is still there, I checked. I first got there in '71. Flew from New York on a TWA Jumbo, the only passenger. Incredible, but true. Even dated one of the stewardesses for a while. The fare was $350 - doesn't seem so much now, but was back then. Found everything just as I imagined. Stayed in the Canyon, lived in a shack by Venice beach, met the weirdest people ever. Worked as a jester, an extra, wrote scripts, but never cracked it. Ten years later a friend and I were held up at gunpoint and robbed of everything we had. But that's L.A., you have to expect the unexpected. Had to dial 911 with the tip of my tongue on a dial phone. Nothing is more terrifying than a SWAT team arriving with guns bristling. They looked disappointed they had no one to kill. Even met a jaded PI in Santa Monica- but it was a dame and she chain smoked. No style.

Even though LA and Hollywood has undergone a huge makeover in the late nineties, the old buildings are everywhere, you can find places and signs that Chandler wrote about. But there are crowds now, the empty spaces and deserted canyons are gone, infilled with homes, cars, every space covered with something, usually tacky. Of course crime still goes on, but it is so relentless, there are so many murders and overdoses and scandals, nothing suprises us. Millions have gone there to live the dream, to find it is just that, a smog filled dream. Elmore Leonard is our guru now and his brilliantly funny work, such as in 'Get Shorty' follows in Chandler's footsteps with wacky, contemporary insights into all these people trying for the main chance, taking any shortcuts they can. For the moment though, I'm sticking with Chandler and his dialogue:

She got raging in an instant. 'Don't call me sister, you cheap gumshoe!'
'Then don't call me buster, you very expensive secretary. What are you doing tonight? And don't tell me you're going out with four sailors again.'
The skin around her eyes turned whiter. Her hand crisped in a claw around a paperweight. She just didn't heave it at me. 'You son of a bitch!' she said somewhat pointedly. Then she flipped a switch and her talk box and said to the voice: 'Mr Marlowe is here, Mr Umney.' Then she leaned back and gave me a look.' I've got friends who could cut you down so small you'd need a step-ladder to put your shoes on.'
'Somebody did a lot of hardwork on that one,' I said, 'But hardwork is no substitute for talent.'
Playback - Raymond Chandler 1958

Perhaps crime fiction grabs us all because the people in them seem to be so very alive. (Save the corpse). They are caught up in things so much bigger than themselves and we live our lives through them. I may never find a fascination with Miss Marple, but I can see why people do. We live in an era now where the government is making criminals of us all. Life is restricted in every which way and with every bend on UK roads getting a speed camera, it is going to be come a very expensive place to live. There isn't a motorist in the county who doesn't think of doubling back and placing some plastic explosive on the cameras. Hell how many hundred thousands want Jeremy Clarkson to become Prime Minister instead of Mr Bean. Our kids take drugs, a lot more than you think, watch violent Playstation games as a norm and act out their fantasies with cold passion. We are entering a new society. There won't be the romance and charm of Chandlerville in the future. Crime will be prevalent, with an aging population, criminals may be older, delinquent 50 year olds may need long sentences or electronic tagging. There is no honour amongst thieves, if there ever was. With the government being able to track us down through our telephones and email and CCTV, the world of the private eye will be high-tech, less mobile, spying on us from computers and eavesdropping sentient microbots. These P.I.s won't get much chance to banter with pretty secretaries, or mix with ambitious young wives of older rich men. More's the pity.
Savour Chandler now and fall in love with a whole way of life that's disappeared forever.

Buy a Raymond Chandler novel here

© Sam North - Jan 2008 (whose first crime novel '209 Thriller Road' St Martin's Press NY.1980 is available at a on-line antique bookseller near you.)

The Curse of the Nibelung - A Sherlock Holmes Mystery by Sam North ISBN 1-4116-3748-8 $19.98 Retail - 300 pages - Lulu Press USA 'Chocolate will never be the same again' - Sunday Express Buy from your favourite on-line retailer Amazon UK Amazon USA Barnes and Noble & Waterstones

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