Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888-1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "e;Blackmailers Don't Shoot,"e; was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was publis...