Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe is perhaps the leading icon of the "hard-boiled" school of mystery writing. The fictional creation of author Raymond Chandler, Marlowe is a private detective, a smart and tough lone wolf with a sense of honor. He works mainly in Los Angeles (where Chandler himself had lived). In all Marlowe appears in seven complete novels by Chandler, beginning with The Big Sleep (published 1939) and ending with Playback (1958). Various TV and radio series also featured the Marlowe character, though they were not written by Chandler. A Marlowe novel left unfinished at Chandler's death, Poodle Springs, was finished by mystery writer Robert B. Parker and published in 1989.

Extra credit: In the movies Marlowe was most famously played by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), and by Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (1975) and The Big Sleep (1978)... He was also played by James Garner in the 1969 film Marlowe, which co-starred Bruce Lee.