No Good from a Corpse

Legendary SciFi writer Leigh Brackett (who won a posthumous award for the screenplay to Empire Strikes Back), began her career as a writer trying to reach the pages of Black Mask. She was never successful in this, but her Chandler-influenced novel No Good From a Corpse was so impressive in its hard-boiled dialogue that Howard Hawks insisted its author, unseen, be brought in to work on the screenplay adaption of The Big Sleep (together with a fella by the name of Faulkner.) Though Hawks was stunned to discover that Leigh was a woman, she got the job, and worked on what was probably the best film adaptation of a Chandler novel. No Good From a Corpse offers hard-boiled private eye Ed Clive, who gets involved with a dead girl, and suspects every one of her boyfriends—an ex-husband, a playboy, a blackmailer and a brute. There's a woman suspect as well, and a long chase through Sunset Strip.