Raymond Chandler bibliography drinking. He began writing crime stories for the pulp magazines "Black Mask", "Detective Fiction Weekly", "The Fortnightly Intruder" and "Dime Detective". The stories were subsequently brought together in collected editions. In 1939, at the behest of the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., Chandler wrote his first novel, "The Big Sleep", for which he used parts of his short stories "Killer in the Rain" (1935) and "The Curtain" (1936). He went on to write seven novels, many of which featured the character Philip Marlowe. In 1944 Chandler was asked by Paramount Pictures to write the script for the film "Double Indemnity"
Raymond Chandler (1917), a previously unknown comic operetta, with libretto by Chandler and music by Julian Pascal, was discovered among the uncatalogued holdings of the Library of Congress. The work was never published or produced. It has been dismissed by the Raymond Chandler estate as "no more than… a curiosity." A small team under the direction of the actor and director Paul Sand is seeking permission to produce the operetta in Los Angeles. Cissy Chandler died in 1954, after a long illness. Heartbroken and drunk, Chandler neglected to inter her cremated remains, and they sat for 57 years in a storage locker