As has already been noted, the characters of Carmody (in
"Finger Man"
and "Goldfish") and Dalmas (in "Red Wind" and "Trouble Is
My
Business") were changed to "Marlowe" when Chandler decided
to preserve
the stories between hard covers in *The Simple Art of
Murder*. This
made commercial sense, since Marlowe was the character he
was best
known for, and, in this way, Houghton Miflin could promote
the book as
a collection of Marlowe stories (which, judging from the
dust jacket
description of the book in its earlier editions, is exactly
what they
did).
He preserved the pulp series names of his character by
changing
Mallory's name in "Smart-Aleck Kill" to Johnny Dalmas, and
Ted
Malvern's name in "Guns at Cyrano's" to Ted Carmody. This
latter name
change has misled people into thinking that the single-named
Carmody
in the *Black Mask* stories was named Ted Carmody. In
addition to
being a sentimental nod to Marlowe's pulp incarnations, I
suspect
Chandler decided to change Mallory's and Malvern's names
because they
were too similar to "Marlowe" (Chandler seemed to have a
thing for
those M-A-L names).
Finally, for reasons that completely baffle me, he changed
the name of
Joseph Choate, the murder victim in "Red Wind," to Joseph
Coates.
Maybe he thought it would sound like a tougher, harder name
if it
began with a hard consonant. - Jim Doherty
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