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Playback (Philip Marlowe #7)

3.72 of 5 stars 3.72 · rating details · 2,123 ratings · 135 reviews

Marlowe is hired by an influential lawyer he's never heard of to tail a gorgeous redhead, but decides he prefers to help out the redhead. She's been acquitted of her alcoholic husband's murder, but her father-in-law prefers not to take the court's word for it.

"Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence:...more

Paperback, 176 pages

Published August 12th 1988 by Vintage (first published 1958)

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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Best Books of the Decade: 1950's

153rd out of 411 books — 413 voters

Novels Set in California

95th out of 265 books — 86 voters

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Feb 24, 2012 Anne Toronto1 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: suspense

5* for now, to remind me to try more. California 1950s had hats, spats, gloves, garters, hankies; some things, like PBX, phone switchboard intercom, no longer exist. The dated setting and phrasing are major to the charm of Chandler. I like humorous expressions. "The next hour was three hours long."
Hard-boiled shamus Philip Marlowe is hired by unknown bigwigs back East to tail classy Eleanor King from the Super Chief train. He overhears sleazy Larry Mitchell blackmail the dusky-red-wavy-haired b...more

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Dec 10, 2010 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've read three Chandlers so far (also The Lady In The Lake and The Big Sleep) and I have to say this was my favourite. The plot, as such, is a little ramshackle and the *big secret* the main dame carries might not be something to shout about, but the prose seems darker than ever and there are slices of almost existential brilliance which left me breathless. If anything, this was more real, more hit-and-miss which real life is all about. The only puzzle is that my edition has a cover shot of a p...more

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May 21, 2013 James Schubring rated it 5 of 5 stars

There is no reason to review a Raymond Chandler novel. It's clear what you'll get before you open the cover: the lying dame, the P.I. slogging through lies, a few fights, a few dead men, perhaps a car chase.

What is always wonderful and always surprising about a Chandler novel is the particular care taken with aspects of the language:

"The next hour was three hours long." I've lived that hour before.

"A cheap sneaky job for people I didn't like." Such a clever way to describe the work of a P.I. (Su...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Aaron rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read Playback without realizing it was the last of Marlowe's cases, and I was impressed at how it seemed to show a more mature character who had evolved over the years.
For starters, Marlowe doesn't feel as conservative in this one. He sleeps around and doesn't seem to chide any of the characters about their sexuality, which is nice. He feels tireder, but less angry then he got in past books, and so even though he still pursues Betty Mayfield with the intent of finding out her past, he seems g...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Derek Bevil rated it 3 of 5 stars

My second Marlowe novel and it clearly feels like a wrapping up exercise and a portrait of futility, displacement and dissatisfaction, epitomized by the dull La Jolla setting of off-season hotels and resorts. There is much to like in a theoretical and conceptual way and the prose and one-liners are as crackling as ever, but the mystery is unessential and unremarkable and the whole story feels a little like watching a 40 year old in a nightclub. Glad overall that I've read it and glimpsed Marlowe...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Kristian Olesen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Chandler's last Marlowe book is also his most introspective. There is hardly any mystery to be solved here, and what little there is has none of the punch and cleverness of earlier outings.

Not that anyone has ever come to a Marlowe novel expecting a watertight plot, and those who do have invariably missed the point. Chandler doesn't write perfect murder-mysteries - he often doesn't even write good murder-mysteries. What Chandler writes is scenes - beautiful, punchy scenes filled with character...more Chandler's last Marlowe book is also his most introspective. There is hardly any mystery to be solved here, and what little there is has none of the punch and cleverness of earlier outings.

Not that anyone has ever come to a Marlowe novel expecting a watertight plot, and those who do have invariably missed the point. Chandler doesn't write perfect murder-mysteries - he often doesn't even write good murder-mysteries. What Chandler writes is scenes - beautiful, punchy scenes filled with character and dialogue and a sense that the protagonist might not be better informed than the reader is, but he is much, much cooler.

But, sadly - or maybe inevitably? - there is something pathetic and decrepit about Philip Marlowe in his final outing. He offers his services to a woman he has been tailing for no apparent reason other than sentiment, and gets virtually no thanks from the client herself. Certainly, it doesn't seem as if she has anything to thank him for - the sense that Marlowe is principally an observer and collector of memories, so integral to the feel of the other six novels, is ironically a major contributing factor to the stunted narrative sustained in Playback. Marlowe just drifts hither and thither getting into his usual scuffles and smart-alecky verbal exchanges without any purpose or momentum. The reader sees Marlowe as she should never see him: through the eyes of the other characters, as an annoyance. Gone is the reader's implicit confidence in Marlowe; gone is his confidence in himself.

The setting might have something to do with it. Taking Marlowe out of LA seems to neuter him in a way. His tough-guy mannerisms seem out of place; he seems to be at once more perfect and less believable than any of the people he encounters. After all that time spent in LA, this is like Marlowe's dotage - he's a big fish in a small pond, and the dull seaside setting seems to spill over into the plot, the characters, and everything else.

Then there's the ending. I recently awarded three stars to Fleming's Casino Royale on the strength of its ending, which redeemed a very average book with something approaching character development. Playback is the exact opposite. I was fully prepared to give Playback a minimum of four stars, which is what any book with the words Philip Marlowe in it deserves. But Playback completely veers off the rails in its final couple of chapters, which is all the more distressing given the weakness of the second act. Marlowe is the opposite of James Bond: he is well-drawn but still mysterious; deep; smart and likeable. We would like Marlowe less if we knew more about him, because we already know enough. He is witty and hard-headed, he knows when he's been taken for a ride, and he likes chess and a stiff drink. We don't want to know about his existential dilemmas, his doubts, his bad habits. So while Bond - the unreconstructed bastard - is redeemed by a bit of character development at the end of his first outing, Marlowe's development is too little, too late, and too tacked-on.

A ruefully-given three stars. I will be returning to earlier Marlowe adventures, lest my last memory of the great man be of this broken-down middle-aged pseudo-detective.(less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Steffan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Interesting book from the Chandler cannon of Philip Marlowe, being the second to last -- or rather the last one published -- and maybe the one least parented and cared for by Chandler and his editors.

I was intrigued as to exactly where this book was going after the first thirty pages and was pretty much left in the exact state until the very end. While this one may fall in the lesser attempts, I'd still say that the dialogue was as good as some of the earlier novels and even has a comedic ring...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Zack S. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: chandler

'Playback', Chandler's final completed novel and the follow-up to 'The Long Goodbye', is a novel that has managed to haunt me since I read it three years ago. The prose throttles me with its speed and economy, and in this novel, more than any of Chandler's others, I feel Marlowe's humanity.

Marlowe is tired, and his sense of reality is breaking down. An example: he beds Miss Vermilyea, his client's secretary, then leaves her house wondering if anything happened. He calls after her down the hallwa...more 'Playback', Chandler's final completed novel and the follow-up to 'The Long Goodbye', is a novel that has managed to haunt me since I read it three years ago. The prose throttles me with its speed and economy, and in this novel, more than any of Chandler's others, I feel Marlowe's humanity.

Marlowe is tired, and his sense of reality is breaking down. An example: he beds Miss Vermilyea, his client's secretary, then leaves her house wondering if anything happened. He calls after her down the hallway she just walked down and gets no response. He looks back at her house as he gets into a cab and it's completely dark. Vermilyea is never seen again - never mentioned again - even when Marlowe visits her employer's office.

It's like the long years of dealing with shadowy figures cloaked by shadowy organizations has finally taken its toll; he's spent his life chasing after phantoms, and with nothing to grasp onto he's finally ready to quit. 'The Long Goodbye' was his breaking point, and Marlowe, now shattered, is failing to mend himself. He's lost his oldest colleague, his best friend and the love of his life; he is truly alone, and it shows.

I think most of the backlash to this novel centers around its general apathy towards hardboiled conventions. There are few mean streets for Marlowe to walk down, no femme fatales for him to resist; there's remarkably little corruption in Esmeralda, and Marlowe ends up almost being a footnote for his total contribution to the mystery's resolution.

But I don't think that's necessarily a fault of the novel. This is coming off of 'Long Goodbye', which is entirely literary fiction for its first 100 pages or so; Chandler was always reaching for more than rote recital of themes and patterns. He was projecting, perhaps, when he wrote this:

"There are no 'classics' of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can never be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel."

'Playback' is not a classic, it is an attempt to give Marlowe the "quality of redemption" that Chandler talked about in the same essay. At the end of a long life of pain, Marlowe needed something to rest on, even if it was the delusion that Linda Loring had come back to him (was it a coincidence that, right at his quietest, emptiest despair, Loring gives him a call?). Chandler was giving Marlowe a final, emotional, humane resolution. If but for that reason alone, 'Playback' is for me a great novel.(less)

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Dec 12, 2011 Jack rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've been haunting bookstores looking for something interesting to read. Raymond Chandler usually fits the bill for me.

This one was a little off-putting because it seemed to wander a little in the middle. Chandler definitely keeps you off your game and on your toes when reading his works. A handful of actors have played Marlowe in the movies, but Bogart is the quintessential P.I. Even his picture is on the cover of this book, but it was never made into a movie that I can see... and it definitel...more

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Jul 16, 2011 Judy rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Mystery, crime fans

Shelves: 20th-century-fiction, books-from-1958, mystery

This was Raymond Chandler's last novel, so now I have read them all. Back in 2002 when I read The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely, it was a whole new genre for me. I was thrilled to be reading about Los Angeles in the 1940s, chilled by the cynicism of Marlowe, and titillated to learn about the seamier side of my adopted city where the degraded, the insane and the rich make their connections.

Now that I have also read Denise Hamilton, Sara Paretsky, not to mention James M Cain, I can see where Ch...more

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Jun 20, 2010 Alex rated it 3 of 5 stars

NOTE: This is a review of the abridged audiobook.

I wasn't too surprised to learn that this is considered to be one of Raymond Chandler's weaker novels. (It also was his last completed novel.) All of the key elements are there--hoodlums, tycoons, femme fatales, and of course world-weary detectives. But the plot relies too much on coincidence and contrivance, and isn't as convincing as his other work. It's just as baffling as "The Big Sleep," but it lacks the intensity which guided us through endl...more

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Apr 22, 2010 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don't know what to think of this book. "If that's the case, Rat," I can hear you say, "why the devil did you give it five stars?" Well, I gave it five stars because it provoked considerable emotion in me, because it intrigued and sometimes baffled me, and because I feel like Mr. Chandler was trying to do something almost experimental with it. I'm not sure what that is, but I feel like there's stuff here in this book that is bigger than my understanding, and I want to give that the benefit of t...more

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Jun 22, 2008 Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: detective-pi, novel

Far away the worst Marlowe book. It is hard to even put it up against the Long Goodbye or Big Sleep. The plot is lacking, but worse are the auxillary characters that usually make these books so readable and fun. Chandler seems intent on getting Marlowe laid in this book. Unfortunately, the dames in this book are not interesting, tough or smart neither are the romances at all credible. Little suspense or violence in this one. However, it is Chandler so it is very readable.

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Apr 08, 2013 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Lovers of, its never too late type things!

Recommended to Mark by: My own determination to fathom Chandler

Shelves: first-person-narration, favorites

Good grief. What a difference 18 months or so makes. I read The Big Sleep and i enjoyed it up to a point but found it a souffle overly egged on the 'witty and offbeat images' ingredient but this one, Playback, I absolutely loved. There is still the wit, the clever descriptions, the tension and mystery but it simply flowed for me more and perhaps i found Marlowe more attractive as a character. He seemed more human and if Chandler sometime strayed into dangerous territory in the prose stakes he in...more Good grief. What a difference 18 months or so makes. I read The Big Sleep and i enjoyed it up to a point but found it a souffle overly egged on the 'witty and offbeat images' ingredient but this one, Playback, I absolutely loved. There is still the wit, the clever descriptions, the tension and mystery but it simply flowed for me more and perhaps i found Marlowe more attractive as a character. He seemed more human and if Chandler sometime strayed into dangerous territory in the prose stakes he inserted his tongue so firmly in his cheek that no-one, not even I, could miss the fun he was having at his own expense.

Then she leaned back and gave me the look. 'I've got friends who could cut you down so small you'd need a step-ladder to put your shoes on.'
'Somebody did a lot of hard work on that one,'I said. 'But hard work's no substitute for talent.'

The story is a contorted and confused one. Marlowe is given a job by an arrogant lawyer to follow a woman but he is not told why or for how long. His tailing of her involves his getting caught up in all sorts of shady and dislikeable characters. A corpse reported which then disappears, a suicide which remains unexplained, a woman who seems to change colours and manner with the wind and assorted larger than life hiss boo villains or incompetents make up a quick and enticing story.

We see Marlowe encountering respect from unexpected quarters, advice and assistance from the habitually overlooked and we see him showing sympathy and a tenderness which is also unexpected.

'Yeah' he sighed. 'You work twenty hours a day to buy a home together and by the time you have, fifteen other guys have been smooching your girl.'
'Not this one,' I said. 'She's just teasing you. She glows everytime she looks at you.'
I went out and left them smiling at each other.

That little excerpt summed up why I preferred this book to the previous one. In The Big Sleep I encountered a brash heavy, a slick talking cynic,; in this one I met a man who I actually genuinely found I was rooting for.

I wolfed it down. I loved every page and the poignancy of the last chapter is really surprising. Hard-bitten private detective or not, in the last few chapters of the book Chandler lets us see this man's soul and his yearning. It is believable, he is decent and by the end I found myself punching the air in delight.

Just to show the change; here is the other review.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

With thanks to Steve who finally gave me the perfect idiot guide as to how to do this simple action !!(less)

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May 24, 2011 Moonit rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-and-justice

I've been hearing that this book is considered the weakest Raymond Chandler novel, but even if that's the case, his weakest is a lot better than some authors' strongest. Short and sweet, with all the usual elements: blackmail, murder, conspiracy, dames, and a countless number of stiff drinks. Philip Marlowe is, as always, the most likable anti-hero. The writing is classic and often humorous. I love sentences like this one: "Down below, the ocean was getting a lapis lazuli blue that somehow faile...more

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Jun 14, 2011 Spiros rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Romantics, losers, melancholics

Shelves: california, chasingmytail, provenance-lost

Exhibit A, "Why I'll never join a Book Group."
Reading Kevin Starr's Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s gave me an itch to revisit this book, since I have always postulated that the resort town Chandler names "Esmerelda" was his stand-in for Santa Barbara. Having read the book again, I'm not entirely sure that I'm correct, since Esmerelda is clearly located between San Diego and Los Angeles. But all that is neither here nor there.
I couldn't track down my ancient, Ballantine po...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Ian rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was Chandler's last novel, which probably explains why it feels a bit tired. It was also based on an unproduced screenplay, which may explain why so much of the plot is explained in dialogue. Marlowe is hired to meet a train and follow a woman who disembarks from it, no matter where she goes. He follows her to the town of Esmeralda, where he overhears a conversation between her and a man in which he his plainly blackmailing her. Marlowe is conflicted - he doesn't like what he's being paid t...more

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Aug 30, 2012 Girts Gailans rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first came across Chandler when I was still at school, and thought he was OK. Then I saw a couple of films of his books - you know the ones - and listened to the words. And they were good. Then I heard a couple of them as radio plays - and the words were very good. Finally I saw a full set of his books in a secondhand book shop and bought them all. And the words were brilliant!
'Playback', to my mind isn't the best of them. But Chandler's second best is better than other writers' very best, so...more

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Jan 15, 2012 David Mcangus rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: detective-smart-ass, crime

Considering the circumstances, I found Playback to be a satisfactory end to my time with Marlowe. It's different to the previous works, in that the plot really is rather irrelevant here. Personally I'd make the argument this is the case with all of Chandler's work, but here it is glaring. What we receive instead is Marlowe's existentialist wanderings. Is he going to be a P.I forever? Is he ever going to allow other people into his life? He's a somewhat broken man in Playback, and after The Long...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Gabriel C. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: noir, 2012

Yes, it's corny. But for me it's a wonderful coda. We want Marlowe to be happy. We see his sex life closer than ever, and it's exactly what we'd imagined, and emptier, and we want him to be happy, and he can be. I'm not going to look to hard at the vicious sexism of the ending. And I'm not too worried about the plot. This was an easy one. At this novel the case is just window dressing. We've deconstructed things far enough that the banterers can laugh at their banter and now we're manipulating s...more

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Oct 05, 2011 Wilsontherocker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Marlowe's hired to follow a beautiful woman and ends up in a small, rich town. He of course gets mixed up with her, and the question of who or what she's running from becomes the central mystery. The heart of the novel is in Marlowe's inner life as he wonders why he's even involved in any of it in the first place.

I've only read one other Chandler novel (The Long Goodbye) , and this was not as memorable. But the writing's excellent throughout, and Chandler still knew how to make you wince and lau...more

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Feb 24, 2011 robyn rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: noir, mystery

Marlowe just isn't that likeable in this book - not as compared to the Marlowe of the earlier stories. He's a little preachy. A little loose. And that unlikely thing happens that DOES happen to this sort of hero, when the writer starts believing his own press (or just gets tired) - instead of the reader being the only one that 'gets' Marlowe, everyone starts to. Women fall at his feet like dominoes. He starts to win, instead of losing all the time.

And it's not that you never want Marlowe to win...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Dave rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is another lightning fast read and absorbing one by Chandler.
A few kinks in the writing show up in what must be the last book written, a few clues and people seemingly show up to reveal too much, because either Marlowe didn't have the time, he had the luck, or Chandler was finally tired of writing his magic.
This will not disappoint, all at once holding the magic of old California and the grumblings which still exist in current California make for a strikingly vivid real setting. It is good....more

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Jul 27, 2012 Cristian rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: detective

It starts off right but by the middle you begin to realize that there might be something wrong with it. I have nothing against old man Chandler letting a few rays of sunshine creep into the crapsack world Marlowe lives in... done right, it could be a stroke of genius and a beautiful way to end the franchise. It's not done right. It's bad. It's unforgivably bad. It's done so poorly that the second half of it reads like fanfic. The finale, in particular, is unbearable. All the magic of the classy...more

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Jun 11, 2011 Charity rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: waking-up-with-bourbon-a-cigarette, language-swooning

In respects the plot is thin on the intrigue of the Noir genre, but the depth of the novel and the portrait of Phillip Marlowe and how his character is further developed in the last of Chandler's novels was really quite staggering to me. Chandler did not get to finish the novel, but the novel, while not having the fully polished feel of his other six novels, this novel still felt complete and pulled together.

Phillip Marlowe may just be the most interesting character in literary history. This is...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Sara rated it 2 of 5 stars

Maybe Raymond Chandler is not going to be my favorite author. It was a mildly entertaining book. If it had been any longer I would have thought it a total waste of my time. It was annoying that he gave small pieces of the puzzle and then put them all together in the end. I usually like that, but when I found out why all the secrets, there didn't seem to be a reason to keep them all secret, except to create this grand ending, which wasn't so grand after all. I thought the end was anti-climatic an...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

Holy smokes! Good book!
Pure Raymond Chandler. Lots of declarative, active-voice, verb-heavy sentences. More snappy dialogue and similies than you can shake a stick at. The protagonist beds a blonde and a redhead, chain smokes and cracks a thug in the nose with a tire iron: you know, all that noir shit.
Even though this is one of the weaker books in Chandler's canon, it is still better than any other detective story out there.
Dashiell Hammett vs. Raymond Chandler? Chandler. Hands DOWN, motherfuck...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Jayaprakash Satyamurthy rated it 3 of 5 stars

The last, and definitely the least, of Chandler's novels. Some of those ice-pick similes and that spiky wit is still on display, but the plot unravels a little too easily at the end and Marlowe is a bit of a sexual goon this time around. His musings on women get pretty sexist and the dialogue put in the mouths of female characters in the many sex scenes (considerably less explicit than what you'd find in, say, James Hadley Chase, thankfully) is frankly egregious. This one is more for the complet...more

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Dec 25, 2011 Morpheus rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: criminal, mystery

Well,the book is not bad. Raymond Chandler is one of the best in this genre.But this book doesn't interested me like other from him. Still,it's not bad book for an empty week-end :)

Книгата не е лоша.Реймънд Чандлър е един от най-добрите в този жанр.Но тази книга не ме заинтригува като други негови.Все пак не е лошо четиво за някой празен събото-неделен ден :Р :)

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Jun 20, 2011 Jason Hillenburg rated it 2 of 5 stars

Written near the end of his life, Playback found Chandler turning an unproduced film script into a Marlowe novel. Unfortunately, the script, since published with a forward by Chandler disciple Robert B. Parker, remains clearly superior to this book.

It is the unfortunate product of physical illness, waning creative powers, and severe alcoholism. Except for scattered passages invoking Chandler's old magic with words, this is an author working without any of the essential elements that made his ear...more

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About Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.

In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In...more

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Books by Raymond Chandler

Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe, #2)

The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe, #4)

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“If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive.
If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.” — 11 people liked it

“Common sense is the guy who tells you that you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a grey suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always someone else's money he's adding up.” — 10 people liked it

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Playback (Philip Marlowe #7)

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