With the exception of Charles Dickens, has any writer has more influence on narration than Raymond Chandler? Dozens and dozens of writers -- not always crime writers -- have tried to sound like Philip Marlowe. Dozens of movies have featured Philip Marlowe-like narrators, including the theatrical release of BLADE RUNNER, where Rick Deckard sound nothing so much as a 21st Century updating. And perhaps there have been even more parodies. Either way, we all know what detective narrators are supposed to sound like, and we know this because of Raymond Chandler.

Raymond Chandler did not invent hardboiled detective fiction. He essentially took Dashiell Hammett's invention and focused nearly all his attention on prose style, character, and detail. There is an almost tactile quality to many of his stories, to the extent where you feel you could almost reach out and wipe the dust off a desk with your finger. There is, also, an almost wanton disregard of plot. If you read Raymond Chandler for plot, you are misreading him. I'll admit that in several of his novels I'm still unclear what happened. But who cares? The brilliance is in the texture, the detail. Take smell. Read virtually any other detective, crime, mystery, or hardboiled novel and look at how often other writers mention smells and then look at Chandler. He is constantly telling you what places smell like, whether mesquite or sage or sandalwood or whatever. Chandler wrote with heightened senses. I frankly can't get around to caring that his plots aren't very tight because other things absorb all my attention.

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY is one of my favorite Chandler novels, perhaps only behind THE BIG SLEEP and his flawed masterpiece THE LONG GOODBYE. It featured many of his most memorable characters, especially the doomed Moose Malloy, and many of his most unforgettable scenes. Because of Chandler's ability to sketch a scene in such astonishing detail, there are scenes in his books that are as easy to visualize as it is a scene in a movie. He is that vivid and precise in his depiction. A great example is Marlowe's visit to Mrs. Florian in his search for Velma. It would be a person of very poor imagination who didn't get a strong sense of what her house looked like, smelled like, felt like.

This is also one of his best books because it is one of the most tragic. The end of the novel feels almost like the end of Hamlet, with nearly all of the major characters either dead or at least shattered. And like with most of Chandler, there isn't an overly nice resolution of the mystery, whereby the detective magically makes everything nice and tidy and correct. Marlowe gets to the bottom of things, but often what he finds when he gets there is an abyss. And speaking of Chandler's influence, can one imagine the end of Raymond Polanski's CHINATOWN without Marlowe?

As a side note, there have been two very good film versions of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY. The first was made by RKO while Chandler was still alive and was originally released with that title. It tanked at the box office, mainly because it starred former Warner Brothers boy crooner Dick Powell. His style of musical had gone out of style and no one wanted to see what they assumed was a musical. So RKO renamed it MURDER, MY SWEET, which obviously could not be a musical, and re-released it. It was a box office success and was crucial in launching the second half of Dick Powell's career, this time as a serious dramatic actor. Chandler himself was horrified at the casting of Powell as Marlowe, but later proclaimed that he thought Powell was outstanding in the role. By the way, the person that Chandler himself thought would have made the ideal Marlowe was Cary Grant. The second version of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY was released in 1975 with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe. With apologies to Humphrey Bogart, Mitchum is my favorite Marlowe. He was a tad too old for the role, but apart from that he absolutely nailed the cynicism and latent nobility of Marlowe. My only regret is that Mitchum didn't begin making a string of Marlowe films when he was 35. As it was he was too old in his second appearance as Marlowe in a bizarre version of THE BIG SLEEP set, of all places, in London.

The vague product description on Amazon may lead you to think this product is an audiobook of Raymond Chandler's classic novel, _Farewell, My Lovely_, but it is not. It more closely resembles that of the radio programs of the 1940's-1950's, an art mastered by Orson Welles.

The dialogue on this CD shows good character, though often a bit exaggerated; this is common in radio performances as you have no other means of conveying emotion but inflection of voice. The plot of the CD mostly follows the book, but much has been omitted. The background soundtrack contains sound effects and music, though the level is well-balanced in effort to reduce the amount of distraction from the dialogue.

It is not substitute for the novel.

Raymond Chandler's novel, _Farewell, My Lovely_, may be one of his most stylistically clever works. Brimming with sarcasm, repressed anger and sexuality, and criticism of both upper and lower classes, Chandler's prose makes any audio adaptation challenging. For those who love old radio programs, this will do for a few hours enjoyment.

The vague product description on Amazon may lead you to think this product is an audiobook of Raymond Chandler's classic novel, _Farewell, My Lovely_, but it is not. It more closely resembles that of the radio programs of the 1940's-1950's, an art mastered by Orson Welles.

The dialogue on this CD shows good character, though often a bit exaggerated; this is common in radio performances as you have no other means of conveying emotion but inflection of voice. The plot of the CD mostly follows the book, but much has been omitted. The background soundtrack contains sound effects and music, though the level is well-balanced in effort to reduce the amount of distraction from the dialogue.

It is not substitute for the novel.

Raymond Chandler's novel, _Farewell, My Lovely_, may be one of his most stylistically clever works. Brimming with sarcasm, repressed anger and sexuality, and criticism of both upper and lower classes, Chandler's prose makes any audio adaptation challenging. For those who love old radio programs, this will do for a few hours enjoyment.

According to Wikipedia, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1940) was Raymond Chandler's second novel and created from three short stories--"The Man Who Liked Dogs" (1936), "Try the Girl" (1937), and "Mandarin's Jade" (1937). This makes a lot of sense to me, since Chandler's great creation, Philip Marlowe, seems more like a character from a short story than the deep and complex creation that a great novelist can achieve.

Yes, Marlowe is certainly a well-defined in FML. He's a guy with high integrity, down-beat and droll, lyrical in his descriptions, relentless and lonely, and he drinks too much. But why is he this way? And what greater issues do his struggles touch upon? Here, Chandler offers next to nothing, unless you have a film-Noir vision of life and view all winners as corrupt and brutal. Instead, he stays small with Marlowe, a highly focused creation developed in short stories, who offers a perfect streamlined literary voice to tell a novel-length story of crime.

This is not to say that Philip Marlowe is ever an uninteresting character in FML. But does he really have a very interesting mind? Take away his lyricism and the grouchy humor of his metaphors and his limits show--he's everybody's sour uncle, boyishly uncompromising, for whom things didn't work out.

Of course, you can't really separate character and voice in fiction. And, Marlowe's voice, its absolutely uncanny metaphors and amazing lyricism, explains why Raymond Chandler, among hundreds of crime-fiction writers, is the guy I choose to read. (I'm usually bored by mysteries and crime fiction.) Here are just two examples from FML.

"He wore a brown suit of which the coat was too small for his shoulders and his trousers were probably a little tight at the waist. His hat was at least two sizes too small and had been perspired in freely by somebody it fitted better than it fitted him. He wore it about where a house wears a weather vane...A tie dangled outside his buttoned jacket, a black tie which had been tied with a pair of pliers in a knot the size of a pea. ...He had a big flat face and a highbridged fleshy nose that looked as hard as the prow of a cruiser."

"Then there were no more houses, just the still dark foothills with an early star or two above them, and the concrete ribbon of road and a sheer drop on one side into a tangle of scrub oak and Manzanita where sometimes you can hear the call of the quails if you stop and keep still and wait. On the other side of the road was a raw clay bank at the edge of which a few unbeatable wild flowers hung on like naughty children that won't go to bed."

In FML, I also enjoyed the brief Hemingway parody and was surprised to encounter--SPOILER COMING--a multi-bullet suicide. This was something Martin Amis used to make a point about crime fiction in Night Train where the narrator is, like Philip Marlowe, burned out but amazingly lyrical.

Being a fan of "modern" mysteries, I always enjoy picking up a "classic" such as "Maltese Falcon" and "I,the Jury." THis was my first Chandler novel. I won't say I liked this book as much as the others mentioned yet reading it made me think of a dialog line from the first "National Treasure" film where Nicholas Cage reads the Declaration of Independence and says "they just don't talk like that anymore." The same holds true here; the characters, the way they talk, and the way a bottle of booze can take care of everything captures the time and makes you understand what made Chandler so revered up to this day.

As so many great novels do, the story line is secondary to you getting engrossed in the time period, the city of Los Angeles, the hero(??), private eye Philip Marlow, and those he meets up with. As some have mentioned, the plot seems somewhat disjointed early on. It almost borders on Quentin Tarantino movie territory in that you have to wait awhile for a couple of separate incidents to come together in order to grasp the entire story. Marlowe literally stumbles into the middle of a couple of murders and the women, bad guys, and good guys that Marlow comes across makes for a sometimes confusing yet very interesting novel.

A good novel but, for me, not as much fun as Spillane or engrossing as Hammett's classic work. Still, this is the kind of book you read, enjoy, and say as you are closing that book cover, "they don't make 'em like they used to."

This is the second Raymond Chandler novel I have read after "The Long Goodbye". I rarely ever read fiction but I can not overemphasize how much I enjoy reading Chandler's novels. These stories are most definitely NOT "page turners" and I mean that as a compliment. A "page turner" leaves the reader in suspense about what is going to happen or what is going to be revealed, often leading me, at least, to superficially scanning much of the prose in order to move ahead more quickly. There is some of this suspense in "Farewell My Lovely" (actually more than in "Goodbye" which spends more time philosophizing) but it is in taking every sentence as it comes, rolling it around in your mouth and savoring the flavor that gives the real pleasure in these novels.
What particularly stands out in this story is the shades of gray of everything. Whereas many detective stories try to fit all the pieces together at the end and show us good guys and bad guys, Chandler's protoganist PI Philip Marlowe sees the world in shades of gray. He doesn't attempt to get to the bottom of people's motivations, and that includes himself. At the beginning of the story, he sees a big white man enter a black nightclub and then sees a black man come flying out the door. For no apparent reason, and admitting that it was none of his business, Marlowe goes in to see what is happening and gets drawn into the mystery. We see people commit murders and yet Marlowe feels that they are not "all bad". Marlowe encounters some policemen who are good, some who are bad and some who are in the middle. In the end, Marlowe figures out more or less what happened, but admits there are holes in his theory, and he can't completely explain why the characters he encountered acted the way they did. This is the way the real world operates and Chandler/Marlowe is telling us to be honest with ourselves and to admit that we often don't know why we do the things we do and whether we are being really consistent.
I find it interesting to note that although this story was written almost 70 years ago, it shows a world that is pretty indistinguishable to our own. The story does not seem "dated". We see the materialist Los Angeles society that I grew up in during the 1960's and 1970's, and the type of people who live on its fringes. The only jarring note I encountered showing the changes in technology since 1940 was when Marlowe mentions he saw an "ice truck" parked on the street. Well, I guess time does move on.
In closing, this novel has one of the most famous Chandler-quotations of them all: "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun."

This is the second Raymond Chandler novel I have read after "The Long Goodbye". I rarely ever read fiction but I can not overemphasize how much I enjoy reading Chandler's novels. These stories are most definitely NOT "page turners" and I mean that as a compliment. A "page turner" leaves the reader in suspense about what is going to happen or what is going to be revealed, often leading me, at least, to superficially scanning much of the prose in order to move ahead more quickly. There is some of this suspense in "Farewell My Lovely" (actually more than in "Goodbye" which spends more time philosophizing) but it is in taking every sentence as it comes and rolling it around in your head that gives the real pleasure in these novels.
What particularly stands out in this story is the shades of gray of everything. Whereas many detective stories try to fit all the pieces together at the end and show us good guys and bad guys, Chandler's protoganist PI Philip Marlowe sees the world in shades of gray. He doesn't attempt to get to the bottom of people's motivations, and that includes himself. At the beginning of the story, he sees a big white man enter a black nightclub and then sees a black man come flying out the door. For no apparent reason, and admitting that it was none of his business, Marlowe goes in to see what is happening and gets drawn into the mystery. We see people commit murders and yet Marlowe feels that they are not "all bad". Marlowe encounters some policemen who are good, some who are bad and some who are in the middle. In the end, Marlowe figures out more or less what happened, but admits there are holes in his theory, and he can't completely explain why the characters he encountered acted the way they did. This is the way the real world operates and Chandler/Marlowe is telling us to be honest with ourselves and to admit that we often don't know why we do the things we do and whether we are being really consistent.
I find it interesting to note that although this story was written almost 70 years ago, it shows a world that is pretty indistinguishable to our own. We see the materialist Los Angeles society that I lived in during the 1960's and 1970's, and the type of people who live on its fringes. The only jarring note I encountered showing the changes in technology since 1940 was when Marlowe mentions he saw an "ice truck" parked on the street. Well, I guess time does move on.

This is the second Raymond Chandler novel I have read after "The Long Goodbye". I rarely ever read fiction but I can not overemphasize how much I enjoy reading Chandler's novels. These stories are most definitely NOT "page turners" and I mean that as a compliment. A "page turner" leaves the reader in suspense about what is going to happen or what is going to be revealed, often leading me, at least, to superficially scanning much of the prose in order to move ahead more quickly. There is some of this suspense in "Farewell My Lovely" (actually more than in "Goodbye" which spends more time philosophizing) but it is in taking every sentence as it comes, rolling it around in your mouth and savoring the flavor that gives the real pleasure in these novels.
What particularly stands out in this story is the shades of gray of everything. Whereas many detective stories try to fit all the pieces together at the end and show us good guys and bad guys, Chandler's protoganist PI Philip Marlowe sees the world in shades of gray. He doesn't attempt to get to the bottom of people's motivations, and that includes himself. At the beginning of the story, he sees a big white man enter a black nightclub and then sees a black man come flying out the door. For no apparent reason, and admitting that it was none of his business, Marlowe goes in to see what is happening and gets drawn into the mystery. We see people commit murders and yet Marlowe feels that they are not "all bad". Marlowe encounters some policemen who are good, some who are bad and some who are in the middle. In the end, Marlowe figures out more or less what happened, but admits there are holes in his theory, and he can't completely explain why the characters he encountered acted the way they did. This is the way the real world operates and Chandler/Marlowe is telling us to be honest with ourselves and to admit that we often don't know why we do the things we do and whether we are being really consistent.
I find it interesting to note that although this story was written almost 70 years ago, it shows a world that is pretty indistinguishable to our own. The story does not seem "dated". We see the materialist Los Angeles society that I grew up in during the 1960's and 1970's, and the type of people who live on its fringes. The only jarring note I encountered showing the changes in technology since 1940 was when Marlowe mentions he saw an "ice truck" parked on the street. Well, I guess time does move on.
In closing, this novel has one of the most famous Chandler-quotations of them all: "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun."

Dodgy dames, crooked cops, one charlatan, one Moose and plenty of booze.

Philip Marlowe is a pretty bright tough guy private eye in Los Angeles, when he is hired to be a bodyguard on a very strange assignment involving supposedly a jewellery ransom buyback.

He is soon crossing paths with various police departments, the rich and powerful, and crimelords, not to mention saps and drugs, as this book improves throughout with some entertaining phraseology.

The tough-as-nails writing of Raymond Chandler has overtaken mysteries to so great an extent that it's easy to forget his role as a trailblazer. 'Farewell, My Lovely,' just Chandler's second novel, already burns with the rot of Los Angeles that spawned countless other imitations and had a far-reaching effect on both crime fiction and moviemaking over the next thirty-five years.

'Farewell, My Lovely' is a typically Chandlerian novel, using first person narrative and a slew of characters. Thirtyish private investigator Philip Marlowe starts with a dull case, before he gets pulled onto the scene of a murder at one of Los Angeles's Afro-American bars. The huge, White assailant Moose Malloy has recently left prison and is searching for his lost girlfriend. Marlowe finds himself beside a dead body and a load of curiosity. Helping with police investigations, he enters a labyrinth of the Los Angeles underworld, including crooked cops, hot blondes, swindling psychics, and racketeers.

Chandler's storytelling in the first person narrative of Marlowe is hard-boiled crime before it took on cliché status. The writing style is crude by necessity; found here is the private detective's rough and cynical attitude that influenced later antiheros like Peter Gunn and the noir style that dominated Hollywood movies. Besides several adaptations of Chandler to the big screen, other directors have paid homage, such as Roman Polanski in 'Chinatown' and David Lynch in 'Blue Velvet.'

'Farewell, My Lovely' is a well-constructed novel, but not without flaw. Chandler lets none of the characters go to waste, each holding a pivotal role in Marlowe's detective work. This novel stays consistent with his first project, 'The Big Sleep,' in having Marlowe revisit the same territory of earlier chapters. There is no predictability at all and Chandler creates genuinely tense moments.

Marlowe, however, is steered by chance far too often and there are times when the action seems contrived, or without inevitability. The easy-going narration helps to smoothen over farfetched elements, such as the unlikelihood of Marlowe getting shoved into Moose Malloy's bar brawl, which is needed just to launch the story. The climax is also rather disappointing, taking place in an unimaginative location.

While dealing with the social realities of 1940s California, Chandler's novels still need to be considered as great entertainments rather than full-fledged literature. The novels make generalizations about human life but are mostly driven by plot. It is pulp fiction of the highest rank: well-written, often humorous, and highly dependable. This novel, like others of Chandler, should hold its place in the detective genre for ages to come.

The Chandler novels have been republished in an attractive collection by Black Lizard, the crime subsidiary of Vintage Books. 'Farewell, My Lovely' is 292 pages long, in a nice art deco format. Imperfect but highly entertaining, the novel is a must for crime fiction fans.

The tough-as-nails writing of Raymond Chandler has overtaken mysteries to so great an extent that it's easy to forget his role as a trailblazer. 'Farewell, My Lovely,' just Chandler's second novel, already burns with the rot of Los Angeles that spawned countless other imitations and had a far-reaching effect on both crime fiction and moviemaking over the next thirty-five years.

'Farewell, My Lovely' is a typically Chandlerian novel, using first person narrative and a slew of characters. Thirtyish private investigator Philip Marlowe starts with a dull case, before he gets pulled onto the scene of a murder at one of Los Angeles's Afro-American bars. The huge, White assailant Moose Malloy has recently left prison and is searching for his lost girlfriend. Marlowe finds himself beside a dead body and a load of curiosity. Helping with the police investigation, he enters a labyrinth of the Los Angeles underworld, including crooked cops, hot blondes, swindling psychics, and racketeers.

Chandler's storytelling in the first person narrative of Marlowe is hard-boiled crime before it took on cliché status. The writing style is crude by necessity; found here is the private detective's rough and cynical attitude that influenced later antiheros like Peter Gunn and the noir style that dominated Hollywood movies. Besides several adaptations of Chandler to the big screen, other directors have paid homage, such as Roman Polanski in 'Chinatown' and David Lynch in 'Blue Velvet.'

'Farewell, My Lovely' is a well-constructed novel, but not without flaw. Chandler lets none of the characters go to waste, each holding a pivotal role in Marlowe's detective work. This novel stays consistent with his first effort, 'The Big Sleep,' in having Marlowe revisit the same territory of earlier chapters. There is no predictability at all and Chandler creates genuinely tense moments.

Marlowe, however, is steered by chance far too often and there are times when the action seems contrived, or without inevitability. The easy-going narration helps to smoothen over farfetched elements of the plot, such as the unlikelihood of Marlowe getting shoved into Moose Malloy's bar brawl, which is needed just to launch the story. The climax is also rather disappointing, taking place in an unimaginative location.

While dealing with the social realities of 1940s California, Chandler's novels still need to be considered as great entertainments rather than full-fledged literature. The novels make generalizations about human life but are, for the most part, driven by plot. It is pulp fiction of the highest rank: well-written, often humorous, and highly dependable. This novel, like others of Chandler, should hold its place in the detective genre for ages to come.

The Chandler novels have been republished in an attractive collection by Black Lizard, the crime subsidiary of Vintage Books. 'Farewell, My Lovely' is 292 pages long, in a nice art deco format. Imperfect but highly entertaining, the novel is a must for crime fiction fans.

Raymond Chandler creates a world of grime and crime in his second novel Farewell, My Lovely. Protagonist and private detective Phillip Marlowe falls into a case when he's taken into an old nightclub with a large ex-con named Moose Malloy. Malloy is looking for his girl Velma, but it seems that the place has been taken under new ownership. Malloy winds up killing a man there, unable to control his temper, but that isn't Marlowe's only trouble. He goes along for the ride on a jewelry ranson deal where his client is brutally beaten to death. Things get stranger and stranger the more things happen, and plenty does.

Even if you've seen any or all of the movie versions, you'll probably find yourself guessing to the very end. How? Because Chandler creates a world like no other, a world truly his own. He preferred Dick Powell as Marlowe in the 40s noir film Murder, My Sweet, an adaptation of this book.

Chandler has an amazing grasp of the Marlowe character. Every line is distinct and memorable. Despite the lurid setting, you'll probably find yourself laughing at Marlowe's wit and sarcasm. This is no childrens' book, but it's an indulgent read. Don't miss it.

Chandler is great fun to read. He structures his sentences and paragraphs with such metaphoric precision that he turns the mundane crime noir into literature. His hero is none other than perhaps an alter ego of Chandler himself Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is the straight talking, honest PI that will not accept any money until he is on the case and everything is legit. I wondered as I read this if Chandler didn't wished he could live his life in the honest and opened fashion of his hero. In `Farewell, My Lovely" Marlowe searches for Velma a nightclub singer and love of ex-con Moose Malloy. Murder, dope dealers, gambling ships, femme fatales and the always questionable police keep Marlowe on and off his toes.

This is another of Chandler's canon that is worth adding to the reading list.

Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's classic noir hard-boiled private detective forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets is right at home here in his search for the inevitable `missing woman' (`dame' for the non-politically correct types) of an ex-convict who will not take no for an answer. And a `missing woman" who wants to stay missing and will not take no for an answer. There is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists, particularly around the identity of the above-mentioned `dame' that caught me off guard. Give me those background oil derricks churning out the wealth while looking for Rusty Regan in Big Sleep or the run down stucco flats in pursue of Moose's Velma in Farewell, My Lovely any day. As always with Chandler you get high literature in a plebian package. Read on.

Farewell, My Lovely was my first Raymond Chandler experience, a novel I first read back in junior year of high school, and one that will forever be known to me as the novel that defines noir, hardboiled detectives and gumshoe novels.

In this classic, detective Philip Marlowe gets hired to recover stolen jewels, which in turn has him running into the rogue gallery of gamblers, con men, crooked cops, and (of course) femme fatales. With this said, the story is completely character-driven, making it full of action and narrative. Just flip the book open to any page, and you'll clearly read slick, muscular dialogue and snappy comebacks. Chandler is a benchmark author for stories stripped of any literary fat.

Besides Dashiel Hammett, Chandler is the perennial writer of gumshoe detectives. And Farewell, My Lovely is the perennial gumshoe novel.

Marlowe is in a tough spot. A hulking behemoth who murders some folks and loves others is on the prowl, and Marlowe sets out to unravel a twisted tale of crookery. Fatal debs seem to assault him from every angle, and Marlowe is beaten, drugged and abused mercilessly, but somehow he never gives up and keeps doggedly pursuing the truth about corruption and death in Los Angeles.
Chandler's use of language is brilliant as always, and the plot is somewhat difficult to follow, but really, with Chander at work, who needs plot? The book is beautiful and the prose is blossoming with unusual and evocative images. Chander ranks as one of the great American masters of prose.
Read this and weep...

Marlowe is in a tough spot. A hulking behemoth who murders some folks and loves others is on the prowl, and Marlowe sets out to unravel a twisted tale of crookery. Fatal debs seem to assault him from every angle, and Marlowe is beaten, drugged and abused mercilessly, but somehow he never gives up and keeps doggedly pursuing the truth about corruption and death in Los Angeles.
Chandler's use of language is brilliant as always, and the plot is somewhat difficult to follow, but really, with Chander at work, who needs plot? The book is beautiful and the prose is blossoming with unusual and evocative images. Chander ranks as one of the great American masters of prose.
Read this and weep...

This novel is simply the best detective novel by the best writer of American detective fiction. Yes, the plots are zanily convoluted, but you don't care, for two reasons: Chandler's stunning prose mixing wisecracks and brilliant images, and Marlowe. Imperfect, human, jaded, but when it counts, Marlowe always comes through.

This novel is simply the best detective novel by the best writer of American detective fiction. Yes, the plots are zanily convoluted, but you don't care, for two reasons: Chandler's stunning prose mixing wisecracks and brilliant images, and Marlowe. Imperfect, human, jaded, but when it counts, Marlowe always comes through.

With smooth moves across the literary dance floor, author Raymond Chandler has his way with his partner, the fortunate reader. Without a word too much or too little, Chandler created a style both casual and elegant. His lead character in this work, private detective Phillip Marlowe, must solve a murder, one that is connected to gambling, beautiful women, guns and danger. If you like the sleek style of the 1930's or 40's, then this writer is probably the one for you.

"She got out a gold cigarette case from her bag and I went over and held a match for her. She blew a vague plume of smoke and watched it with half shut-eyes.
"Sit close to me," she said suddenly.
"Let's talk a little first."
"About what? Oh...my jade?"
"About murder."

Given Chandler's enormity I'm feeling (as I did with Austen) more like I'll be reviewed than him - and this is complicated by the fact that I've been too busy lately to get to the review soon after reading the book. Anyway, with these disclaimers I'll push on.

Great stuff - Chandler really has his own voice, mood and characters. Indeed, he's quite self-conscious in this book, having Anne Riordan remonstrate with Marlowe about how he *should* have run and concluded his investigation in a more traditional and elegant fashion:
"You ought to have given a dinner party ... and you at the head of the long table telling all about it, little by little, with your charming light smile and a phony English accent.."
Marlowe responds for Chandler, "It's not that kind of story. It's not lithe and clever. It's just dark and full of blood."
Interesting that Chandler felt he had to justify his deliberate departure from the classic mannered English detective story - or was he just enjoying highlighting the contrast?

And it's not *just* dark and full of blood: there's flirting, camaraderie, humour, honour, and even a romantic ending. Still, along the way Marlowe takes a hell of a beating given his somewhat inexplicable method - which involves identifying particularly dangerous individuals and locations and just walking in without preparation, protection or backup. If you somehow manage to still be breathing after they've pounded you for a while, you've got some more clues to your case. And you even get the (nice) girl on your own terms:
`You're so marvellous,' she said, `So brave, so determined, and you work for so little money. Everybody beats you over the head and chokes you and smacks your jaw and fills you with morphine, but you just keep right on hitting between tackle and end until they're all worn out. What makes you so wonderful?
`Go on,' I growled, `Spill it.'
Anne Riordan said thoughtfully: `I'd like to be kissed, damn you!'
So who's reviewing this book - me or Chandler?

Marlowe is a pretty cool pro, but anything but a schemer. He throws himself in the ring and improvises. He blurs the lines, liking some of the bad guys a bit much, being rough and coarse - but then bugging the good guys by showing he's read a bit and can show more chivalry than they do. And just what was going on with `Mrs Grayle' and the midnight assignation which could have ended very differently:
`I bet it's fun to be played by handsome blondes,' Anne Riordan said. `Even if there is a little risk. As, I suppose, there usually is.'
I didn't say anything.

He's quite a contrast with the cold, aloof (but still troubled) Sherlock Holmes. If getting involved might cloud his judgement a bit, hey, what the hell...

Chandler has a knack for making his characters shine - Marlowe is actually a bit of a soft touch, he can empathise, and from his perspective we find things to draw us to them the way he is. An odd thing in his in other ways very bleak, rough world.