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Re: RARA-AVIS: "Red Wind" Dalmas & Marlowe
Terry McCombs put his finger on it that all of Chandler's early
private eyes are basically Marlowe in one name or another.
The following has been said in bits and pieces, but let me summarize
something the bibliography.
Chandler allowed Avon to publish 3 collections of his stories in the
digest-sized Murder Mystery Monthly series. Each retains the
original name of the sleuth from the magazines:
FIVE MURDERS, 1944
FIVE SINISTER CHARACTERS, 1945
FINGER MAN AND OTHER STORIES, 1946.
All are very pricey on the rare book marklet (no, I don't want to
revive THAT discussion), and even Avon's rack-sized reprints of the
books are no longer easy to find.
What are easy to find are the two World hardback editions, which
reprint most of the stories from the Avon collections:
RED WIND, 1946
SPANISH BLOOD, 1946
When Chandler put together THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER in 1950, he
included 11 of the 13 stories in the Avon paperbacks, and one
previously uncollected story. In three of the stories, he changed the
original narrator/sleuth to Marlowe (including "Red Wind"), but in one of them, "Smart-Aleck
Kill," changed "Mallory" to "Johnny Dalmas"! Don't ask me why.
Since then, almost all editions of the stories have used the 1950
names, though I believe that the new 2 volume omnibus goes back in at
least some cases to the originals.
Doug
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