An American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, he decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, he published just 7 full novels during his lifetime. All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times.

He had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature and is considered a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with private detective, both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe.