Doc,
As Mark says, the short answer is that the novel THE LADY IN
THE LAKE was, basically, expanded from the short story "The
Lady in the Lake."
The longer answer is this. All but one of the stories in the
posthumous KILLER IN THE RAIN collection are stories Chandler
combined and expanded into his novels, "cannibilized" to use
his term. THE BIG SLEEP combined and expanded "The Curtain"
and "Killer in the Rain." FAREWELL, MY LOVELY combined and
expanded "Try the Girl," "Mandarin's Jade," and "The Man Who
Liked Dogs." THE LADY IN THE LAKE combined and expanded
"The Lady in the Lake" and "Bay City Blues."
Chandler did not want his "cannibilized" material to be
reprinted, so there was no collection of these stories until
after he died.
The last story in the collection, "No Crime in the
Mountains," is sometimes erroneously listed as one of the
sources from which Chandler contructed the novel version of
THE LADY IN THE LAKE. Indeed, Philip Durham's introduction to
KILLER IN THE RAIN, in whic he describes at length Chandler's
process of combining and expanding his previously published
short fiction, states flatly that "No Crime" was one of the
roots of TLITL. Actually, though, if you read the story,
you'll find that there's little, aside from the rural setting
and a colorful rustic policeman, that this story has in
common with the novel, and both those elements are already
present in the short story version of "The Lady in the Lake,"
so there was no reason for Chandler to plunder them from "No
Crime."
In fact, Chandler considered including "No Crime" in his
"official" short story collection THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER,
and he didn't consider including any of his cannibilized
material. The reason he excluded "No Crime" was not because
it was connibilized, but because he thought that the WW2
espionage plot dated it, and he didn't want to update it to a
(presumably) Cold War espionage plot.
And that's probably more than you ever wanted to know.
JIM DOHERTY
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