It’s taken a little while but I am pleased to say my biography of Raymond Chandler will be released on the 15 July this year.This is all very exciting. It’s been tough — incredibly tough, actually — but I am very pleased with the final product and I hope you will be too.

Eagle eyed readers will have noticed that the title has changed. When I first had the idea for the book I wanted to call it Subdued Magic which references a letter from Raymond Chandler about F. Scott Fitzgerald. He talks about Fitzgerald’s alcoholism and worries that drinking had stopped him from fulfilling his literary potential. This was also a worry of Chandler’s and part of the thesis of my book is that Chandler was driven by this concern to write better books.

In the end though we decided that Subdued Magic was not a well known enough quote to mean anything outside the text itself and so we chose something that might have meaning to readers. In choosing A Mysterious Something In The Light as the title I think we’ve made the right decision. It is a quote that has both impact and is instantly recognizable as a being written by Chandler. Hopefully, when you walk into a bookstore, it will leap out at you. Let me know what you think.

Pre-order Something Mysterious In The Light on Waterstones.com