The world of mysteries and thrillers has produced some memorable friendship but perhaps none quite so distinguished as the one struck up later in life between between Raymond Chandler, the laureate of American hardboiled fiction, and Ian Fleming, the legendary English author of the James Bond novels. The relationship began when Fleming wrote to Chandler asking for an endorsement that would be used to help market the Bond novels in America. Chandler ultimately reviewed two books from the 007 series—Diamonds Are Forever and Dr. No—for The Sunday Times, and the two authors, both on their way to legendary status, struck up a warm personal relationship. In 1958, celebrating Chandler’s 70th birthday, the BBC asked Fleming to “interview” his eminent friend. The result was a rollicking, far-ranging conversation in which the authors discussed the state of the thriller, heroes and villains, the struggle for literary credibility, and how a murder is planned and executed. It would be the last time the two friends met before Chandler’s death the following year, in 1959. Fortunately, the conversation was recorded and made available by the BBC. It’s a treasure for readers and writers alike. Below we’ve collected the recording in four parts and picked out some of the highlights for transcription, along with their timestamps. Read on to find out exactly what the two authors thought of one another’s work, as well as how they believed the murder of Albert Anastasia was carried out.
What exactly is a thriller?
(5:45 – 6:15)
Fleming: Well, the first thing, really, is to define what we’re supposed to be talking about. I think the title of what we’re supposed to be talking about is English and American thrillers. What is a thriller? To my mind of course, you don’t write thrillers and I do.
Chandler: I do too.
Fleming: I don’t call yours thrillers. Yours are novels.
Chandler: A lot of people call them thrillers.
Fleming: I know. I think it’s wrong.
Villains are tough to write, but they exist.
(1:45 – 2:25)
Fleming: I don’t know if you do, but I find it extremely difficult to write about villains. Villains are extremely difficult people to put my finger on. You can often find heroes wandering around life. You meet them and come across them as well as plenty of heroines of course. But a really good solid villain is a very difficult person to build up, I think.
Chandler: In my own mind I don’t think I ever think anyone is a villain.
Fleming: No, that comes out in the book. But you’ve had some quite tough, villainous people there.
Chandler: Yes, the exist.
In which the authors plot a killing in a Coen Brothers movie.
(2:30 – 4:35)
Fleming: I see they had another killing last week in New York. One of these men connected with that dock union man—what’s his name?
Chandler: Albert Anastasia?
Fleming: Anastasia, yes. How’s a killing like that arranged?
Chandler: Very simply. You want me to describe how it’s done?
Fleming: Yes, yes.
Chandler: Well, first of all the syndicate has to decide if he must be killed, and they don’t want to kill people.
Fleming: No.
Chandler: It’s bad business nowadays.
Fleming: Yes.
Chandler: When they make the decision they telephone to a couple of chaps in, say, Minneapolis, in a hardware store or something—a respectful business front. These chaps come along to New York and they’re given their instructions and they’re given a photograph of the man and told what’s known about him. They’re given guns…
Fleming: In Minneapolis?
Chandler: No, not in Minneapolis. After they get their instructions they’re given guns. Now, these guns are not defaced in any way, but they are guns that have passed through so many hands that the present owners can never be traced. The company could only say the first purchaser. So, they go to where the man lives, and they get an apartment or a room across the street from him. They study him for days and days and days until they know just exactly when he goes out, and when he comes home, what he does. And when they’re ready, they simply walk up to him and shoot him. They have to have a crash car—Bugsy Siegel was a great man for the crash car. The crash car is in case a police car should come down the street, and it accidentally on purpose smashes the police car..
Fleming: Yes, I see what you mean.
Chandler: So they get away. They get back on the plane and go home, and that’s all there is to it.
Why bother with torture?
(2:20 – 3:50)
Chandler: Why do you always have to have a torture scene?
Fleming: Well…do I always? Yes, let me think now…maybe you’re right.
Chandler: Well, every one that I’ve read.
Fleming: Really? I suppose I was brought up on Dr Fu Manchu and thrillers of that kind and somehow always, even in Bulldog Drummond and so on, the hero at the end gets in the grips of the villain and he suffers, either he’s drugged or something happens to him…
Chandler: Well, next time, try brainwashing. Probably worse than torture.
Fleming: I think it is, yes. I don’t like to get too serious. This so-called hero of mine has a good time. He beats the villain in the end and gets the girl and he serves his government well. But in the process of that he’s got to suffer something in return for this success. I mean, what do you do, dock him something on his income tax? I really tire of the fact that the hero in other people’s thrillers gets a bang on the head with a revolver butt and he’s perfectly happy afterwards—just a bump on his head.
Chandler: That’s one of my faults—they recover too quickly. I know what it is to be banged on the head with a revolver butt. The first thing you do is vomit.
The elements of a good thriller.
(3:50 – 5:30)
Fleming: I wonder what the basic ingredients of a good thriller really are. Of course, you should have pace; it should start on the first page and carry you right through. And I think you’ve got to have violence, I think you’ve got to have a certain amount of sex, you’ve got have a basic plot, people have got to want to know what’s going to happen by the end of it.
Chandler: Yes, I agree. There has to be an element of mystery, in fact there has to be a mysterious situation. The detective doesn’t know what it’s all about, he knows that there’s something strange about it, but he doesn’t know just what it’s all about. It seems to me that the real mystery is not who killed Sir John in his study, but what the situation really was, what the people were after, what sort of people they were.
Fleming: That’s exactly what you write about, of course—you develop your characters very much more than I do, and the thriller element it seems to me in your books is in the people, the character building, and to a considerable extent in the dialogue, which of course I think is some of the nest dialogue written in any prose today. I think basically we’re both of us to a certain extent humorous too, which possibly might not come out at first sight, but we like making funny jokes.
Chandler: ‘So and so’ is really rather a bore.
