The Simple Art of Murder

The Simple Art of Murder is the title of several quasi-connected publications by hard-boiled detective fiction author Raymond Chandler:

  • The first, and arguably best-known, is a critical essay on detective fiction, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in December 1944. A revised, expanded version was included in Howard Haycraft's 1946 anthology The Art of the Mystery Story.
  • The second is a separate, shorter essay, mostly describing Chandler's personal experiences writing for pulp magazines, originally published in Saturday Review of Literature, April 15, 1950.
  • The third is a short story collection, also originally published in 1950 (by Houghton Mifflin Co.), which contains eight of Chandler's stories pre-dating his first novel The Big Sleep, that he wanted remembered.
    • While first editions of this collection feature (an abridgement of) the Saturday essay as an introduction and the Atlantic essay as an afterword, later editions tend to feature the Atlantic essay as the introduction and relegate the Saturday essay to other collections (most commonly Trouble Is My Business).
The Simple Art of Murder
First edition
AuthorRaymond Chandler
Cover artistArtzybasheff
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreCrime fiction, literary criticism
PublisherHoughton Mifflin
Publication date
1950
Media typePrint
OCLC17506654
813/.52 19
LC ClassPS3505.H3224 S56 1988

The Atlantic essay is considered a seminal piece of literary criticism. Although Chandler's primary topic is the art (and failings) of contemporary detective fiction, he touches on general literature and modern society as well.

The opening statement – "Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic" – places Chandler in a lineage with earlier American Realists, in particular Mark Twain and his critique of James Fenimore Cooper, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses". Chandler dissects A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery much as Twain tears apart Cooper's The Deerslayer, namely by revealing what is ignored, brushed over, and unrealistic. "If the situation is false," Chandler writes, "you cannot even accept it as a light novel, for there is no story for the light novel to be about." He expands his criticism to the bulk of detective fiction, especially of the English variety which he complains is preoccupied with "hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish." In addition to Milne, Chandler confronts Dame Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, E. C. Bentley, and Freeman Wills Crofts. "The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers." Chandler's critique of the "classic" Golden Age detective story goes beyond a lack of realistic characters and plot; Chandler complains about contrivances and formulas and an inability to move beyond them. The classic detective story "has learned nothing and forgotten nothing."

Chandler reserves his praise for Dashiell Hammett. Although Chandler and Hammett were contemporaries and grouped as the founders of the hard-boiled school, Chandler speaks of Hammett as the "one individual... picked out to represent the whole movement," noting Hammett's mastery of the "American language", his adherence to reality, and that he "gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse."

Chandler concludes his essay by moving from reality in literature to reality itself, "a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities... it is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in." He states that this world requires the hero of Hammett's (and his own) fiction, a man who walks the "mean streets" with a sense of honor and a notion of justice, who neither wears them on his sleeve nor allows them to be corrupted.

References in other work

The Geraldine McEwan telemovie based on Agatha Christie's novel The Murder at the Vicarage shows Miss Marple reading Chandler's book. Early in the telemovie Miss Marple says, "There is never anything simple about murder."

  • The Simple Art of Murder at Faded Page (Canada)
  • Chandler, Raymond (1950), The Simple Art of Murder ISBN 0-394-75765-3
  • The Simple Art of Murder, Random House.
  • "The Simple Art of Murder", American Literature (essay), The University of Texas.
  • Oates, Joyce Carol. "The Simple Art of Murder". The New York Review of Books.
  • Haycraft, Howard (1946), The Art Of The Mystery Story, The Universal Library, Grosset & Dunlap, New York
  • Chandler, Raymond (1995), Later Novels and Other Writings, The Library of America ISBN 1-883011-08-6


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