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 his secretary; Sonia Orwell (George Orwell's widow); and Natasha Spender (Stephen Spender's wife). Chandler regained his U.S. citizenship in 1956. After a respite in England, he returned to La Jolla. He died at Scripps Memorial Hospital of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and prerenal uremia (according to the death certificate) in 1959. Helga Greene inherited Chandler's $60,000 estate, after prevailing in a 1960 lawsuit filed by Fracasse contesting Chandler's holographic codicil to his will. Chandler is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, in San Diego, California. As Frank MacShane noted in his biography, "The Life of Raymond Chandler", Chandler wished to be