Killer in the Rain

Eight short stories in this book, written before Chandler wrote his novels. They are all reused and amended in his more popular novels - and developed into his Philip Marlowe series.

The main characters in these are all the basis of Philip Marlowe, but go by the names Carmady, Dalmas and Evans.

The introduction does some analysis - which was cleverer than my own which consists of “... this storyline is familiar, but I have no idea which of Chandlers novels it is from...”, except where the titles are the same in the short story as the novel...
It is a bit more complicated than that, as he took storylines and wove them together, he took characters and re-used their descriptions, and he played with different outcomes.

Here is the brief description, with some date information: (novel title in bold, short story titles in quotes!)
A substantial part of Chandler's first novel, The Big Sleep (1939) was made from ‘Killer in the Rain' (Jan 1935) and ‘The Curtain' (Sept 1936); the second novel Farewell, My Lovely (1940) made extensive use of ‘The Man Who Liked Dogs' (March 1936), ‘Try the Girl' (Jan 1937), and ‘Mandarin's Jade' (Nov 1937); and the fourth novel, The Lady in the Lake (1943) relied on ‘Bay City Blues' (June 1938), ‘The Lady in the Lake' (Jan 1939) and ‘No Crime in the Mountains' (Sept 1941).
The introduction then goes on to explain a few of the more minor parts which are used - even within the short stories - an example of which - In ‘No Crime in the Mountains' the description of Constable Barron is essentially the same as the description of Constable Tinchfield in ‘The Lady in the Lake'.

Anyways, this was an enjoyable read - mainly just because it was Raymond Chandler, but it was obvious that this was pre-cursory work before he really had the polish onto his stories, and as such they probably lack some of the wordsmithing that makes his novels so excellent.

3.5 stars - bumped up because I enjoyed the short story format.