<DIV><i>It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. </i><br> <br> With these words, private eye Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s great literary creation and one of the most enduringly popular characters in American fiction, first took life seventy-five years ago. Here, for the first time in a deluxe collector’s box, are all seven Philip Marlowe novels?<i>The Big Sleep</i>; <i>Farewell, My Lovely</i>; <i>The High Window</i>; <i>The Lady in the Lake</i>; <i>The Little Sister</i>; <i>The Long Goodbye</i>; and <i>Playback</i>?along with thirteen classic pulp stories, Chandler’s brilliant screenplay for <i>Double Indemnity</i>, and a selection of his revealing essays and letters: the most comprehensive edition of the hard-boiled crime fiction of Raymond Chandler ever published.</div>