Raymond Chandler and Jim Butcher

[Asriel]

I came across this article on Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe detective series.  I've been meaning to pick up the series (because of the comparison made to Dresden Files on some covers), and this article definitely increased my interest, and I see a lot of parallels between what the reviewer says about Chandler's character Harry Dresden and what I see in Harry.  Some highlights:

"Chandler wrote that ‘P Marlowe has as much social conscience as a horse. He has a personal conscience, which is an entirely different matter."

"His personal conscience believes that law and justice are not necessarily the same thing . . . and that violence and law-breaking can be the right thing to do."

"t is hard to imagine Marlowe self-consciously  . . .  worrying that some local atrocity signals the end of an entire civilisation." - OK, so maybe this is something Harry and Marlowe don't have in common 

The article is worth a read for DF fans, and is available here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7851

[finarvyn]

Thanks for the link. I've read all of Chandler's Philip Marlowe series and agree that he was the gold standard of detective fiction. When I first read Jim's Dresden books I felt they compared strongly to Chandler. (They're still good, but no longer have that same detective feel the way the first couple of books did.)