In the Beginning ...

Author and Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins reminds us that it was 75 years ago this month that Raymond Chandler’s fiction first appeared in print. His short story “Blackmailer’s Don’t Shoot” was featured in the December 1933 issue of Black Mask magazine, though the cover was given over to “Dead Men’s Shoes,” a Chinatown tale by Erle Stanley Gardner.

“Blackmailers” featured a Chicago private eye named Mallory, who would--together with other Chandler P.I. protagonists--eventually provide a model for the much better known Philip Marlowe. Mallory only appeared in one more short Chandler story, “Smart-Aleck Kill,” which was published in the July 1934 edition of Black Mask.

To see the cover of the December ’33 magazine, plus a video tour of the apartment building where Chandler lived while writing “Blackmailers,” click here.