This big anthology was first published in 1988, 100 years after the birth of Raymond Chandler. It had stories by private eye writers such as Max Allan Collins, Sarah Paretsky, Edward D Hoch, and Loren D. Estleman, as well as others by authors including the academic Francis M. Nevins (the biographer of Cornell Woolwich) and British humourist Simon Brett. This re-publication has added two more stories, and something for which I have longed: maps of Marlowe's Los Angeles and southern California.

Each author has taken a year from Marlowe's career: so Collins sets the "The Perfect Crime" in 1935, and the twenty-sixth contribution closes in 1959. Ten years ago this was Chandler's only Marlowe short story, "The Pencil", but J. Madison Davis's "The Sixty Four Squares" and Roger L. Simon's "Summer in Idle Valley" now finish the job. Although each author writers a final note on what Chandler has meant to him or her, some of them have achieved Marlowe's voice better than others. And some of them have achieved Chandler's plotting better than others - Nevins, for instance, finishes his contribution by saying he has not been too slavish. His ventriloqual powers are gapingly absent (unlike Brett's).

On the other hand something like Edward D. Hoch's "Essence D'Orient" is short and surprisingly good - it is also an unacknowledged sequel to "Pearls Are A Nuisance". One or two manage to slip Chandler himself into the dramatis personae - W. R. Philbrick's "The Empty Sleeve" is set in 1941 and features Chandler, Billy Wilder and more at a card game in Hollywood, while Roger Simons's late "Summer in Idle Valley" deals with the old, alcoholic Chandler (who was also a friend of the then young children's writer Dr Seuss). And others try to take some piece of Hollywood history and drop Marlowe into it - John Lutz's "Star Bright", for instance, features a rival to Norma Jean Mortensen, explaining why Norma Jean made it into Marilyn Monroe and why Marlowe's delays meant that Ella Lou want back to the sticks.

Marlowe never dies, but Robert B. Parker's sequels left him weaker. This is a good price, and it is still possible to speed read the lesser tales and find a lot left even then. Check it out.