Raymond Chandler: A Biography

Is Philip Marlowe, the tough-guy detective Chandler immortalized in seven pulp fiction novels, really Raymond Chandler? At heart, both were loners in L.A. with a penchant for drinking themselves into blackout oblivion. Journalist Tom Hiney's absorbing, no-guff bio, Raymond Chandler: A Biography, integrates the work with the man, while fleshing out Chandler's chameleonlike existence — from Nebraskan farm boy to Bloomsbury literati, from apricot picker to oil executive, from impoverished 44-year-old novice crime writer to renowned ''slacking Shakespeare.'' A stark, sympathetic chronicle of an often suicidal alcoholic — and a gentle man who loved his wife and cat. A-