and forgotten nothing." Chandler reserves his praise for Dashiell Hammett. Although Chandler and Hammett were contemporaries and grouped as the founders of the hard-boiled school, Chandler speaks of Hammett as the "one individual... picked out to represent the whole movement," noting Hammett's mastery of the "American language", his adherence to reality, and that he "gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse." Chandler concludes his essay by moving from reality in literature to reality itself, "a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities... it is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in." He concludes by outlining his conception (and that of Hammett) of the central character of all detective fiction, the detective himself – a man who provides the contrast to the seediness and immorality in the universe of the "realist" fiction he's championing – "down these mean streets must go a man who is not himself mean...He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it." This man must have a keen sense of justice, but not wear it on his sleeve yet not allow it to be corrupted. References in other work The Geraldine McEwan telemovie based on Agatha Christie's novel The Murder at the Vicarage shows Miss Marple reading Chandler's book. Early in the telemovie Miss Marple says, "There is never anything simple about murder." The closing lines of the essay, setting his vision of corruption in the world against the possibility of an uncorrupted man, has been quoted often – as the title of the book Down These Mean Streets and Martin Scorsese's movie Mean Streets. External links and references Chandler, Raymond (1950), The Simple Art of Murder . . Haycraft, Howard (1946), The Art of the Mystery Story, The Universal Library, Grosset & Dunlap, New York Chandler, Raymond (1995), Later Novels and Other Writings, The Library of America Short story collections by Raymond Chandler Detective fiction short stories Essays about literature Works about art genres 1944 essays 1950 short story collections Works originally published in The Atlantic (magazine) Houghton Mifflin books