Few writers are as inextricably linked with a city as Raymond Chandler and Los Angeles. The neon-lit streets, mobbed-up joints and seedy rooming houses portrayed in his fiction were real places, familiar to Angelenos of the time, and in some cases recognisable today. This is a guide to the world of Raymond Chandler and his noble alter-ego, the private detective Philip Marlowe. It mixes locations from the books, the films and Chandler's personal life. There's the crummy dive where Moose Malloy went looking for Velma; the actual lounge where Marlowe and Terry Lennox ordered gimlets; the top-floor suite where oil executive Chandler got his priceless education in how a dirty, sun-drenched city really operated. This is the Los Angeles that Raymond Chandler carried in his heart. And now, you can too.
Author
Kim Cooper is the creator of 1947project, the crime-a-day time travel blog that spawned Esotouric's popular crime bus tours, including Pasadena Confidential, the Real Black Dahlia and Weird West Adams. Her collaborative L.A. history blogs include On Bunker Hill and In SRO Land. With husband Richard Schave, Kim curates the Salons of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. When the third generation Angeleno isn't combing old newspapers for forgotten scandals, she is a passionate advocate for historic preservation of signage, vernacular architecture and writer's homes. Kim was for many years the editrix of Scram, a journal of unpopular culture. Her books include Fall in Love For Life, Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, Lost in the Grooves and an oral history of the cult band Neutral Milk Hotel. Her debut literary map is The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles: A Guide to the Usual and Unusual, illustrated by Paul Rogers. The Kept Girl is her first novel.
