A review by rosekk
The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler

3.0

I liked the way he constructed the setting(s) of the stories, and some of the characters (particularly the detectives) were great. I really enjoyed the pearl story. The problem I had was that everything was so gritty it was hard to care about the murders and the mystery - I never really felt like solving the mystery was important, because it didn't feel like that would make anything any better in the long run - the whole setting was just so set up for everyone to die that death didn't really matter. And tons of people died in the solving of the mystery as well, so the act of solving the mysteries often felt dirtier than the original crime.