Raymond Chandler's cynical world-weary private eye is drawn into the brutal murder of his drinking buddy's wife. Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a Detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers don't shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular Pulp Magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery writers of America Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature.

Kipps The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H .G Wells, first published in 1905. It was reportedly Wells own favorite among his works, Arthur "Artie" Kipps, an illegitimate orphan. In Book I, "The Making of Kipps", he is raised by his aged aunt and uncle, who keep a little shop in New Romney on the southeastern coast of Kent He attends the Cavendish Academy – "a middle-class school"