Mr Raymond Chandler has written that he intends to take the body out of the vicarage garden and give murder back to those who are good at it. His books should be read and judged, not as escape literature, but as works of art. - W.H. Auden

The detective story has the elements of tragedy without being tragic, and the elements of heroism without being heroic. It is a dream world which may be entered and left at will, and it leaves no scars... The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective. The things which happen to him might still happen to him, but they would happen as the result of a peculiar set of chances. By making him a private detective, you skip the necessity of justifying his adventures. - Raymond Chandler