"Killer in the Rain and other stories" by Raymond Chandler

This book is a collection of four stories: Killer in the Rain, Fingerman, Goldfish and The Curtain. All of these stories were initially published in pulp fiction magazines, and later cannibalized to produce Chandler's first novels. 'Killer in the rain' is half 'The Big Sleep', 'Fingerman' being the other half. If you ever wondered why some elements seem to appear in 'The Big Sleep' once and then are never mentioned again, the short stories give the answer, as they are logical and all elements are well connected.

The plots in the stories are much tighter than in the novels where Chandler indulges in some of his favorite elements (like the hard-boiled dialogs, which I personally love). The detective in the first two stories is unnamed, and in the last two is Carmady, his original detective before inventing the unsurpassed Philip Marlowe.

This collection was published posthumously as Chandler did not allow these stories to be republished during his lifetime. Apparently the original book version has 8 stories in it, out of which the first, second and fourth Chandler's novels were written, but the audiobook version I read had only 4 stories on it.

The style is great and enjoyed reading these stories, however the best introduction to Chandler is reading 'The Big Sleep' and 'Murder, my sweet', and I would recommend those two novels to readers unacquainted with Chandler's work in order to really experience the shock, force and purity of his hard-boiled style.