Portside

Frederic Jameson writes that for Raymond Chandler, a detective novel may reveal patterns that underlie the workings of our society. Reviewer Angela Woodward agrees, crediting Chandler's novels with brilliantly illuminating the grimy microcosm, played out "in the heart of the darkness of a local world without the benefit of the federal Constitution, as in a world without God." She finds that Jameson makes every strand of Chandler's oeuvre glisten with significance.