We now offer two Raymond Chandler tours, which divide neatly at La Cienega Blvd. into East and West Los Angeles. In A Lonely Place, focuses on downtown and Hollywood, settings and scenes from his life and novels to his work in motion pictures which sent him in a tail spin from which he would never recover. The Bay City tour is a look at his middle novels (Farewell My Lovely, Lady In the Lake) and short stories including "Bay City Blues" and how the Westside shaped his both fiction and life. These tours are complementary. Each exists independently, and do not presuppose a knowledge of the other, but taken as a whole they provide a deep and rich portrait of a giant in American Letters and early contributor to the myth which we have all come to know as Los Angeles.

In A Lonely Place: Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles

Chandler’s Bay City

This tour is not currently offered on our schedule, but can be booked as a private tour for large groups. Please visit our FAQ page for info about private bookings.

Introducing Chandler's Bay City: Crook town, run down, shabby town, gambling town. Novelist Raymond Chandler gravitated to sin and debauch, so Santa Monica in the 1930s was a frequent stop for Philip Marlowe. From doctors feelgood to second wives with pasts to crooked cops with a loathing for a mouthy PI, this tour has it all. Chandler's canonization of sin, wealth and sunshine on L.A.'s Westside fed the abiding myths of the American hard-boiled genre and play into the popular conception of the region.

Focusing on Chandler's middle period – "Farewell My Lovely," "Lady in the Lake" and a few short stories upon which these novels are built, "Bay City Blues" among them-- this tour will explore Chandler's take on the Westside, the real life rackets and murders which gave Bay City its wild reputation, and the elements of the old community that have survived layer upon layer of gentrification.

As the bus rolls from point to point, your guides will draw the lines between Chandler's life and his fiction, offering insight into his nomadic life with wife Cissy, the enigmatic redhead who appears in many forms in his short stories and novels.

Locations for the tour include:

The ruins of Pickfair (Mary Pickford's former beach house, and close to the launch for the gambling ships)

Site of the former Santa Monica City Hall (4th & Santa Monica) immortalized in "Farewell My Lovely."

Former site of Thelma Todd's sidewalk cafe (just West of Sunset on the PCH), inspiration for the Lindsay Marriot House in "Farewell My Lovely."

Santa Monica and Brentwood residences for Ray & Cissy.

Books & Short Stories covered in the tour:

Farewell My Lovely
Bay City Blues
Lady in the Lake
Red Wind
The Little Sister

Click here for info on a special edition of our popular Chandler tour, exclusively for Vroman's Bookstore customers and departing from their Pasadena store.