Thank you for your letter. I have finished a rough, and I am sorry I mean rough, draft of the book [Farewell, My Lovely] and am now sitting back in a haze of expensive cigar smoke admiring myself. There's a lot to be done on it yet and I am afraid you can't count on it by the end of this month, nor at the earliest before the end of next. Some scenes have to be written in, some dropped, some this and that. It is rather a mess. If you think so, you will have no complaint from me. It's about 80,000 words at present and I don't know how it will end up, probably about 75,000.

I guess even smart people in the publishing business are whittling their wits with the carving knife by now. But I think there is going to be a mild boom in detective stories. But better writers will have to write them. I don't think the average American detective story is nearly good enough--from the writing point of view.

I won't talk about the War, because I am not a neutral and don't pretend to be.

Yours most sincerely,

Raymond Chandler