Raymond Chandler Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in "Black Mask," a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, "The Big Sleep", was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935 film) to the original unfinished novel, solving the mystery of the fate of Edwin Drood. "Mystery of Edwin Drood" marks Claude Rains' only appearance in a Charles Dickens film. The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935 film) The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a 1935 American mystery-drama film directed by Stuart Walker and starring Claude Rains in the role of the villainous John Jasper. It is the third film adaptation and first sound film version of Charles Dickens's unfinished novel of the same name. Filmed by Universal Pictures, it co-stars Douglass Montgomery and Valerie Hobson (the future Estella of David Lean's 1946