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I tried to finish a dead man's novel

It is both a gift and a curse to be handed a briefcase containing a life’s work

Because with every storming of a castle and boarding of a starship, with every flourish of calligraphy and strikethrough of red pen, there is an unspoken yet deafening declaration: I will write a story, and I would sooner die before I let it be incomplete. Before he died in 1959, famed detective fiction writer Raymond Chandler wrote the opening four chapters of a story tentatively titled Poodle Springs, the eighth Philip Marlowe novel. Here is the best I can explain the feeling: on a bus in summer, sweltering heat, the gridlock of rush hour, when someone from the back cracks open the emergency hatch in the ceiling and the ocean breeze tumbles down, and you did not realize, this entire time, you had been holding your breath.

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