Short answers, pulled from the story.
Raymond Chandler began writing detective fiction in 1932, at the age of forty-four, after losing his job as an oil company executive at the Dabney Oil Syndicate during the Great Depression. His first published story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot," appeared in Black Mask magazine in 1933.
The Big Sleep, published in 1939, is Chandler's most celebrated novel. It placed second on the Crime Writers' Association poll of the 100 best crime novels and introduced the private detective Philip Marlowe.
Humphrey Bogart played Philip Marlowe in Howard Hawks's 1946 film adaptation of The Big Sleep. Dick Powell played Marlowe in the 1944 film Murder My Sweet, based on Farewell, My Lovely, in what was the character's screen debut.
Chandler co-wrote the screenplay for Double Indemnity (1944) with Billy Wilder, which was nominated for an Academy Award. His only original screenplay, The Blue Dahlia (1946), also received an Academy Award nomination. He also collaborated on the screenplay for Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951).
Chandler is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego, California. On the 14th of February 2011, following a court order, his wife Cissy's ashes were interred above his grave. Their shared gravestone reads "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts," a line from The Big Sleep.
"The Simple Art of Murder" is Chandler's critical essay on detective fiction and is considered the canonical statement in the field. In it he argues that the hardboiled detective must be a complete and honorable man who navigates corrupt surroundings without being corrupted, describing him as "the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."