Visit the upcoming tour page for upcoming walking tour dates. This tour is also available as a private group booking.

Join Esotouric for an immersive time travel trip in the footsteps of master detective novelist Raymond Chandler and his cynical alter ego Philip Marlowe, in the historic heart of Downtown Los Angeles.

Chicago-born and educated in a fine English boarding school, Chandler found his literary voice during long boozy lunches as a 1920s oil company executive, quietly observing the criminal origins of great Los Angeles fortunes. Although he left Downtown in the 1930s and found success with fiction and screenwriting, the old neighborhood cast an abiding spell and he returned to it throughout his career.

This tour explores some of the time capsule sites where the young Chandler worked and played, and where the mature writer set some of his most memorable and murderous scenes. From Angels Flight Railway and old Bunker Hill to the Oviatt Building, Clifton’s Cafeteria to seedy hotels on the edge of Skid Row, we’ll bring Chandler’s real and invented worlds alive on a stroll among beautiful, fascinating landmarks.

Along the way, you’ll get to know the real Raymond Chandler, with intimate details sleuthed out by the tour guides who over many years of noir exploration have discovered Chandler’s previously unknown comic operetta and penned a Chandler map and nonfiction novel The Kept Girl about the real life cult of angel worshippers who fleeced his oil executive colleague and were front page news in a crime crazed city.

This walking tour is illustrated with rare photos you can view on your smartphone.