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Raymond Chandler: Later Novels and Other Writings
With humor, along with an unerring sense of dialogue and the telling details of dress and behavior, Raymond Chandler created a distinctive fictional universe out of the dark side of sunlit Los Angeles. In the process, he transformed both crime writing and the American language.
Written during the war, The Lady in the Lake (1943) takes Philip Marlowe out of the seamy L.A. streets to the deceptive tranquility of the surrounding mountains, as the search for a businessman’s missing wife expands into an elegy of loneliness and loss. The darker tone typical of Chandler’s later fiction is evident in The Little Sister (1949), in which an ambitious starlet, a blackmailer, and a seemingly naïve young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, are the key players in a plot that provides fuel for a bitter indictment of Hollywood and Chandler’s most savage portrayal of his adopted city.
The Long Goodbye (1953), his most ambitious and self-revealing novel, uncovers a more anguished resonance in the Marlowe character, in a plot that hinges on the betrayal of friendship and the compromises of middle age. Playback (1958), written originally as a screenplay, is Chandler’s seventh and last novel.
A special feature of this volume is Chandler’s long-unavailable screenplay for the film noir classic, Double Indemnity (1944), adapted from James M. Cain’s novel. Written with director Billy Wilder, it is one of the best screenplays in American cinema, masterful in construction and dialogue. Supplementing the volume, and providing a more personal glimpse of Chandler’s personality, is a selection of letters and essays—including “The Simple Art of Murder,” in which Chandler muses on his pulp roots and on the special qualities of his hero and style.
Written during the war, The Lady in the Lake (1943) takes Philip Marlowe out of the seamy L.A. streets to the deceptive tranquility of the surrounding mountains, as the search for a businessman’s missing wife expands into an elegy of loneliness and loss. The darker tone typical of Chandler’s later fiction is evident in The Little Sister (1949), in which an ambitious starlet, a blackmailer, and a seemingly naïve young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, are the key players in a plot that provides fuel for a bitter indictment of Hollywood and Chandler’s most savage portrayal of his adopted city.
The Long Goodbye (1953), his most ambitious and self-revealing novel, uncovers a more anguished resonance in the Marlowe character, in a plot that hinges on the betrayal of friendship and the compromises of middle age. Playback (1958), written originally as a screenplay, is Chandler’s seventh and last novel.
A special feature of this volume is Chandler’s long-unavailable screenplay for the film noir classic, Double Indemnity (1944), adapted from James M. Cain’s novel. Written with director Billy Wilder, it is one of the best screenplays in American cinema, masterful in construction and dialogue. Supplementing the volume, and providing a more personal glimpse of Chandler’s personality, is a selection of letters and essays—including “The Simple Art of Murder,” in which Chandler muses on his pulp roots and on the special qualities of his hero and style.
1076 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1995
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About the author
Raymond Chandler
449 books5,601 followersRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great 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 addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
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April 19, 2009
The summer I graduated from college my boyfriend and I had an abrupt, ugly breakup, and I moved out of the apartment we'd shared and into a studio on the other side of town. It was the first and only time I ever lived by myself. The apartment was in a large, smelly building downtown, and had a Murphy bed, a clawfoot bathtub, and an antique apparatus to speak with any visitors who buzzed in from downstairs. I don't know if the phone thing worked, as I had very few people stop by while I lived there. All my friends were in Southeast, and I kept my car across the river because there was nowhere to park near my place. All I remember eating the whole time I lived in that apartment was pasta salad, and I did almost nothing that summer but drink whiskey and read crime novels. It felt nearly impossible to do anything else. I got drunk by myself and read the classics -- Chandler, Hammett -- and an unholy amount of Elmore Leonard. I couldn't read any other kind of book at all.
That summer's crime spree was my only real foray into that genre, and though I enjoyed it a lot, I haven't felt much need to go back to them since. What I remember thinking then is that most of the crime books I read seemed to be thinly disguised romances, written for men. This is definitely true of Elmore Leonard. The books of his I read were essentially hardboiled emotional bodice-rippers, with exceptionally well-crafted dialogue. The other thing I remembered about the crime novels was their obsession with the question of masculinity. The detective is always a tragic hero, who epitomizes the ideals of what a man should be, while struggling with its more painful implications (you know, loneliness and violence, stuff like that).
What I remembered about Chandler was only the style, and that was still there when I went back this time. What I hadn't remembered, maybe because it's more present in the later novels, is his obsession with loneliness, and with ethics, and the question of how to be a truly moral man in a deeply corrupt world. Chandler talks about the traditional mystery novel as being a puzzle to solve; his own puzzle seems to be this riddle of ethics, and how to live correctly amidst depravity. Marlowe's the sinner you scratch to get the saint, the cynic who's obviously a wounded romantic. It's a type and a cliche, but he helped create it, and the whole thing's great to watch and a lot of fun. I read the novels in here in reverse order: his last book Playback(1958), followed by The Long Goodbye (1953) (his best, I think), then The Little Sister (1949) (fun) and finally The Lady in the Lake (1943), this last being the only one I'm sure that I'd read before. Then I did the essays, his letters (also fun), and the depressing chronology of his interesting life, which was nice because it did provide some context for the fiction, and confirmed a lot of the thoughts I'd been having about his approach to writing.
Chandler only seems to care about a couple of things, and he cares about them a lot. One of those is style. In his letters he basically comes out and says that he really doesn't give a shit about plot, which should already be fairly obvious to anyone who's read him. Chandler has a very rigid and developed theory of the crime novel, and concern with plot is not a big priority. There's this part in one of his letters where he complains about contemporary fiction and sort of summarizes what he thinks is essential in writing:
Can I do a piece for you entitled The Insignificance of Significance, in which I demonstrate in my usual whorehouse style that it doesn't matter a damn what a novel is about, that the only fiction of any moment in any age is that which does magic with words, and that the subject matter is only a springboard for the writer's imagination.... (p. 1028).
And later, to somebody else:
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. In the long run, however little you talk or even think about it, the most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can makes with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you never even heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who pus his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off. He can't do it by trying, because the kind of style I am thinking about is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it (p. 1030).
For instance:
I stared. She caught me staring. She lifted her glance half an inch and I wasn't there anymore. But wherever I was I was holding my breath.
There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-cold glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is deadly as the bravo's rapier or Lucrezia's poison vial.
There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn't care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pale and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can't lay a finger on her because in the first place you don't want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindesmith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them.
And lastly there is the gorgeous showpiece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler.
The dream across the way was none of these, not even of that kind of world. She was unclassifiable, as remote and clear as mountain water, as elusive as its color. I was still staring when a voice close to my elbow said:
"I'm shockingly late. I apologize. You must blame it on this. My name's Howard Spencer. You're Marlowe, of course." (from The Long Goodbye, pp. 490-491)
If you have no use for this, you have no use for Chandler. I myself do (far more use than I have, say, for blondes).
I find pretty frequently that when I return to characters who seemed purely cool and glamorous to me when I was younger, through adult eyes I see that they're tragic and flawed. Women love Marlowe (with alarming frequency), but he's really alone, consciously lonely, and desperately so. Marlowe's only real intimacy is with his reader, and the staggering sense of alienation and impossible yearning to connect with others was much more intense here than I'd remembered. Since (for reasons I simply could not guess at myself) loneliness is becoming one of my personal favorite literary tropes, I did enjoy that. Marlowe is sort of the stylish model for how to be alone amidst all the urban anomie and whatnot of the modern age. How sorry I am to have missed that era. If Marlowe'd had Internet, he would've been screwed.
I obviously also enjoyed all the pulpy nuts crime stuff in its nostalgic glory! This is a mid-twentieth-century-LA landscape peopled with sensual blondes, mysterious brunettes, and sinister, syringe-wielding doctors. The police brutality comes hot and heavy, here as do hip references to the dangerous narcotic marihuana, which is clearly on par with a drug like heroin, and not with the alcohol being consumed in these pages at a liver-stiffening rate. Even just as a study in changing cultural mores, these novels are fascinating. There are shows on TV now about sympathetic drug dealers, but if you put this much smoking into a show today, it'd be banned.... If the Reefer Madness-style drug references seem a bit naive and dated, and if the sexpot names Eileen, Mildred, and Mavis have not aged well, and if the non-white characters would make your average 2009 reader screech in agonies of offense.... well, the cinematic descriptions of characters and sets are as flawless and beautiful as anything like this that has ever been written. I don't feel the need to get into how the master of this genre was the master of this genre, but clearly Chandler was quite the master of this genre, plus quite a bit more, and I'd be glad to slug it out in an alley in Bay City with any two-bit thug that'd argue otherwise.
Chandler himself seems to have been a pretty interesting, tragic guy, sort of the classic damaged romantic-cynic with passionate ideals and a horrific drinking problem. He'd had a classical education in England, and comes off in his non-fiction writings as something of a tortured and self-aware snob who can't miss the irony that snobbery's the reason his own genre fiction is not taken seriously. I'd actually be interested in reading a biography of Chandler at some point, and I also want to revisit his earlier novels. These books are addictive as hell, and an immersive pleasure. I myself have gotten a lot more hardboiled just from reading Chandler, and I'd recommend him to anyone who'd like to do the same, provided you're not currently trying to quit smoking.
That summer's crime spree was my only real foray into that genre, and though I enjoyed it a lot, I haven't felt much need to go back to them since. What I remember thinking then is that most of the crime books I read seemed to be thinly disguised romances, written for men. This is definitely true of Elmore Leonard. The books of his I read were essentially hardboiled emotional bodice-rippers, with exceptionally well-crafted dialogue. The other thing I remembered about the crime novels was their obsession with the question of masculinity. The detective is always a tragic hero, who epitomizes the ideals of what a man should be, while struggling with its more painful implications (you know, loneliness and violence, stuff like that).
What I remembered about Chandler was only the style, and that was still there when I went back this time. What I hadn't remembered, maybe because it's more present in the later novels, is his obsession with loneliness, and with ethics, and the question of how to be a truly moral man in a deeply corrupt world. Chandler talks about the traditional mystery novel as being a puzzle to solve; his own puzzle seems to be this riddle of ethics, and how to live correctly amidst depravity. Marlowe's the sinner you scratch to get the saint, the cynic who's obviously a wounded romantic. It's a type and a cliche, but he helped create it, and the whole thing's great to watch and a lot of fun. I read the novels in here in reverse order: his last book Playback(1958), followed by The Long Goodbye (1953) (his best, I think), then The Little Sister (1949) (fun) and finally The Lady in the Lake (1943), this last being the only one I'm sure that I'd read before. Then I did the essays, his letters (also fun), and the depressing chronology of his interesting life, which was nice because it did provide some context for the fiction, and confirmed a lot of the thoughts I'd been having about his approach to writing.
Chandler only seems to care about a couple of things, and he cares about them a lot. One of those is style. In his letters he basically comes out and says that he really doesn't give a shit about plot, which should already be fairly obvious to anyone who's read him. Chandler has a very rigid and developed theory of the crime novel, and concern with plot is not a big priority. There's this part in one of his letters where he complains about contemporary fiction and sort of summarizes what he thinks is essential in writing:
Can I do a piece for you entitled The Insignificance of Significance, in which I demonstrate in my usual whorehouse style that it doesn't matter a damn what a novel is about, that the only fiction of any moment in any age is that which does magic with words, and that the subject matter is only a springboard for the writer's imagination.... (p. 1028).
And later, to somebody else:
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. In the long run, however little you talk or even think about it, the most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can makes with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you never even heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who pus his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off. He can't do it by trying, because the kind of style I am thinking about is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it (p. 1030).
For instance:
I stared. She caught me staring. She lifted her glance half an inch and I wasn't there anymore. But wherever I was I was holding my breath.
There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-cold glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is deadly as the bravo's rapier or Lucrezia's poison vial.
There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn't care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pale and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can't lay a finger on her because in the first place you don't want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindesmith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them.
And lastly there is the gorgeous showpiece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler.
The dream across the way was none of these, not even of that kind of world. She was unclassifiable, as remote and clear as mountain water, as elusive as its color. I was still staring when a voice close to my elbow said:
"I'm shockingly late. I apologize. You must blame it on this. My name's Howard Spencer. You're Marlowe, of course." (from The Long Goodbye, pp. 490-491)
If you have no use for this, you have no use for Chandler. I myself do (far more use than I have, say, for blondes).
I find pretty frequently that when I return to characters who seemed purely cool and glamorous to me when I was younger, through adult eyes I see that they're tragic and flawed. Women love Marlowe (with alarming frequency), but he's really alone, consciously lonely, and desperately so. Marlowe's only real intimacy is with his reader, and the staggering sense of alienation and impossible yearning to connect with others was much more intense here than I'd remembered. Since (for reasons I simply could not guess at myself) loneliness is becoming one of my personal favorite literary tropes, I did enjoy that. Marlowe is sort of the stylish model for how to be alone amidst all the urban anomie and whatnot of the modern age. How sorry I am to have missed that era. If Marlowe'd had Internet, he would've been screwed.
I obviously also enjoyed all the pulpy nuts crime stuff in its nostalgic glory! This is a mid-twentieth-century-LA landscape peopled with sensual blondes, mysterious brunettes, and sinister, syringe-wielding doctors. The police brutality comes hot and heavy, here as do hip references to the dangerous narcotic marihuana, which is clearly on par with a drug like heroin, and not with the alcohol being consumed in these pages at a liver-stiffening rate. Even just as a study in changing cultural mores, these novels are fascinating. There are shows on TV now about sympathetic drug dealers, but if you put this much smoking into a show today, it'd be banned.... If the Reefer Madness-style drug references seem a bit naive and dated, and if the sexpot names Eileen, Mildred, and Mavis have not aged well, and if the non-white characters would make your average 2009 reader screech in agonies of offense.... well, the cinematic descriptions of characters and sets are as flawless and beautiful as anything like this that has ever been written. I don't feel the need to get into how the master of this genre was the master of this genre, but clearly Chandler was quite the master of this genre, plus quite a bit more, and I'd be glad to slug it out in an alley in Bay City with any two-bit thug that'd argue otherwise.
Chandler himself seems to have been a pretty interesting, tragic guy, sort of the classic damaged romantic-cynic with passionate ideals and a horrific drinking problem. He'd had a classical education in England, and comes off in his non-fiction writings as something of a tortured and self-aware snob who can't miss the irony that snobbery's the reason his own genre fiction is not taken seriously. I'd actually be interested in reading a biography of Chandler at some point, and I also want to revisit his earlier novels. These books are addictive as hell, and an immersive pleasure. I myself have gotten a lot more hardboiled just from reading Chandler, and I'd recommend him to anyone who'd like to do the same, provided you're not currently trying to quit smoking.
November 20, 2013
In addition to the later novels, this volume contains some very interesting letters, and a few reflections on the art of writing the murder mystery. There are, however, quite a few typos - which is astonishing when one considers that this is supposed to be a 'corrected edition' and that it contains in the back of the volume (1066f.) a list of "typographical errors" that were fixed from the original printings. In fact, and for this reason, it took me quite some time to realize that these WERE, in fact, just typos, and not quirks of style. Plus - the physical book itself, though a hardbound, started to fall apart: the glue was old, and the cloth place keeper frayed and fell apart.
So dock a star for the edition --
So dock a star for the edition --
June 5, 2016
"Murder, which is a frustration of the individual and hence a frustration of the race, may have, and in fact has, a good deal of sociological implication. But it has been going on too long for it to be news. If the mystery novel is at all realistic (which it very seldom is) it is written in a certain spirit of detachment; otherwise nobody but a psychopath would want to write it or read it." - "The Simple Art of Murder"
More like an averaged out "4.5 out of 5" rating, but hey, who's counting.
Let's just rank this:
5 stars:
1) The Long Goodbye (also, arguable, Chandler's masterpiece)
2) Double Indemnity (co-writer, Billy Wilder)
3) The Lady in the Lake (just a sensational murder mystery with a bevvy of awesome supporting characters)
4 stars:
4) The Little Sister (certainly one of the three great openings to any book ever)
5) Playback (slight, but also includes many great insights; a significant and thoughtful-minor work if that makes sense)
The other selected writings are good too, especially the one about writing in Hollywood. I might not have read every single of the letters, but no matter. Chandler's non-fiction writing gives a good sense of the man: intellectual, thoughtful, and not someone to suffer fools lightly.
More like an averaged out "4.5 out of 5" rating, but hey, who's counting.
Let's just rank this:
5 stars:
1) The Long Goodbye (also, arguable, Chandler's masterpiece)
2) Double Indemnity (co-writer, Billy Wilder)
3) The Lady in the Lake (just a sensational murder mystery with a bevvy of awesome supporting characters)
4 stars:
4) The Little Sister (certainly one of the three great openings to any book ever)
5) Playback (slight, but also includes many great insights; a significant and thoughtful-minor work if that makes sense)
The other selected writings are good too, especially the one about writing in Hollywood. I might not have read every single of the letters, but no matter. Chandler's non-fiction writing gives a good sense of the man: intellectual, thoughtful, and not someone to suffer fools lightly.
March 29, 2017
This review pertains to the novel: "The Lady in the Lake".
This is my first Raymond Chandler novel but I intend to become thoroughly well acquainted with Philip Marlowe this year.
I like Chandler's writing technique and I appreciate the Marlowe character. The plot structure in this novel is fairly straight forward (a friend has warned me that Chandler's plots can be quite convoluted) although there is a surprise I never saw coming.
BTW, I have to give a big shout out to the Library of America. This truly is the definitive publisher of American literature in nicely bound books on acid free paper which will last a lifetime. Check out their website for interesting articles about authors, playwrights, and poets. There are also sales and promotional offers and, should you chose to open an account, stories from featured authors sent to your email.
I will be checking out "The Big Sleep" next.
This is my first Raymond Chandler novel but I intend to become thoroughly well acquainted with Philip Marlowe this year.
I like Chandler's writing technique and I appreciate the Marlowe character. The plot structure in this novel is fairly straight forward (a friend has warned me that Chandler's plots can be quite convoluted) although there is a surprise I never saw coming.
BTW, I have to give a big shout out to the Library of America. This truly is the definitive publisher of American literature in nicely bound books on acid free paper which will last a lifetime. Check out their website for interesting articles about authors, playwrights, and poets. There are also sales and promotional offers and, should you chose to open an account, stories from featured authors sent to your email.
I will be checking out "The Big Sleep" next.
August 2, 2022
Collection of four novels starring the archetypal private detective Philip Marlowe, along with a few other works by Raymond Chandler. Overall, this is a great selection of "hard-boiled" fiction in the tradition that spawned film noir.
"The Lady in the Lake": This probably has the best plot of the group, with Marlowe investigating a disappearance and a lot of convoluted deception. There is a nice contrast between the urban landscape of Los Angeles and the countryside of the fictional Little Fawn Lake, but crime and corruption may occur in either setting.
"The Little Sister": Chandler seems to have had a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles and "The Little Sister" is a bitter screed on the Hollywood scene and its pretenses. Marlowe finds hypocrisy and dead bodies almost everywhere he goes.
"The Long Goodbye": This novel explores Marlowe's strict code as he investigates the death of a friend. Chandler seems to be pushing the envelope as to how far Marlowe will go for a seemingly minor personal relationship and to resolve a mystery.
"Playback": This is a novel about secrets, the lengths that people must go to hide those secrets, and the cost of doing so.
The template of the dodgy client, enticing but dangerous women, baffling clues, and moral ambiguity run through all the novels. Marlowe usually gets his ritual beating by thugs and/or cops which verge on the sadistic. Authority figures are rarely much help and sometimes hopelessly corrupt. There is also frequent stereotyping, especially of women, gay men and Mexicans, that unfortunately appears throughout Chandler's novels. In "Playback" however, there is a brief moment that hints at an awareness of racism when a mixed race character bitterly tells Marlowe, "You'd hate to be me."
The screenplay to "Double Indemnity" will have few surprises for fans of the movie but is a nice inclusion, as are the essays and letters.
"The Lady in the Lake": This probably has the best plot of the group, with Marlowe investigating a disappearance and a lot of convoluted deception. There is a nice contrast between the urban landscape of Los Angeles and the countryside of the fictional Little Fawn Lake, but crime and corruption may occur in either setting.
"The Little Sister": Chandler seems to have had a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles and "The Little Sister" is a bitter screed on the Hollywood scene and its pretenses. Marlowe finds hypocrisy and dead bodies almost everywhere he goes.
"The Long Goodbye": This novel explores Marlowe's strict code as he investigates the death of a friend. Chandler seems to be pushing the envelope as to how far Marlowe will go for a seemingly minor personal relationship and to resolve a mystery.
"Playback": This is a novel about secrets, the lengths that people must go to hide those secrets, and the cost of doing so.
The template of the dodgy client, enticing but dangerous women, baffling clues, and moral ambiguity run through all the novels. Marlowe usually gets his ritual beating by thugs and/or cops which verge on the sadistic. Authority figures are rarely much help and sometimes hopelessly corrupt. There is also frequent stereotyping, especially of women, gay men and Mexicans, that unfortunately appears throughout Chandler's novels. In "Playback" however, there is a brief moment that hints at an awareness of racism when a mixed race character bitterly tells Marlowe, "You'd hate to be me."
The screenplay to "Double Indemnity" will have few surprises for fans of the movie but is a nice inclusion, as are the essays and letters.
June 8, 2025
"Flip dialogue is not wit" - Raymond Chandler, note #4 in his "Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story"
The Library of America's volume 2 of Raymond Chandler's work contains the final four Philip Marlowe novels, the Chandler-written script for the noir classic film "Double Indemnity," and some other Chandler essays and letters. Here are my reviews for each:
The Lady in the Lake:
LA PI Phillip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy man to find his estranged wife, a money-spending floozy who sent him a telegraph a month prior stating her intention to divorce and remarry another man, but the divorce and marriage meanwhile have not happened and the guy wants to know what happened to her.
Marlowe's investigation takes him into the mountains surrounding LA, a cabin property held by his client where there's a lake and, of course, a dead body.
As Marlowe moves from player to player, is accosted by cops, has suspicions backed up or shot down as he runs them by other investigators, and as he comes upon people in various stages of compromise, we get a desperate lone sarcastic knight vibe, a guy placing discretion equal to to truth and both over position and power. The female side characters in this are varying degrees of innocence and danger as in prior Chandler mysteries, never revealing all their cards but always holding a vulnerable reckless edge and who are all possibly capable of just stabbing him in the back.
The fourth in the Marlowe series, "The Lady in the Lake" (1943) is a more personal and weighty tale, not because we get any insight into Marlowe's background or relationships (we don't) but because we can see the impact of this case on him, and perhaps of the opening stage of WWII on Chandler (this was written right after Pearl Harbor and takes place in 1942). The world is an evil place, we can trust no one, the righteous are concerned with ulterior motives but also still desperate to help others, no one will respond to a question without it being at most a guarded half-truth, everyone is seeking honest companionship they know doesn't exist, and we're all in this adventure in life together but alone. It is a perfectly-paced and focused mystery from start to finish.
Verdict: A classic noir detective whodunit with a great protagonist by a smart author at the top of his game.
Jeff's Rating: 5 / 5 (Excellent)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13
The Little Sister:
Investigator Phillip Marlowe is hired by a young woman to find her brother, who came to big bad LA months ago from Kansas and has stopped writing home. When visiting the brother's most recent boarding house to look for him, Marlowe meets one shady character and then finds a dead body with an ice pick murder weapon still in his neck.
Marlowe ends up in Golden Era Hollywood culture and social situations with a mobbed up blackmailer and studio agent trying to keep one of his young actress's wholesome image intact.
Verdict: A good noir crime mystery, "The Little Sister" (1949) is Chandler's biting love/hate take on Hollywood's phony nobility, with smart personal entanglements and edged dialogue. Marlowe is that hard-working investigator who mostly serves as our guide to mischief, a half-step behind and usually too late to correct all these wrongs.
Jeff's Rating: 3 / 5 (Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13
The Long Goodbye:
LA Private Eye Phillip Marlowe has befriended a down-and-out drunk named Terry Lennox. Lennox is spiraling into a gentlemanly debt-adding depression, possibly over his wife's openly adulterous behavior and his inability to keep her respectable. When the woman ends up dead, Marlowe is roughed up by cops looking for Lennox and then he finds the police and city's powers-that-be just want the whole murder and scandal swept under the rug, which rankles Marlowe because he's not even sure Lennox killed the woman.
A second case comes along and Marlowe is enlisted by a beautiful lady and her husband's book publisher to find her husband, who has been having recurring lapses in alcoholic benders and not finishing his latest work.
The sixth book of the Marlowe detective series, "The Long Goodbye" resonates with its perfect dialogue, murky LA setting, sarcastically grounded wit, righteous investigation and discretion for those who fit one of Marlowe's many subconscious soft spots, futility at trying to curb someone's self-destructive habits, and most notably a quick and damning disdain for those who take advantage of the weak or noble, something we all recognize easier with middle-age.
Among classic noir mysteries and the Chandler-written Marlowe stories specifically (I've now read six of the seven), I'd say "The Big Sleep" is better regarded by most readers, "The Lady in the Lake" is a better-paced and plotted mystery for me, and "Farewell, My Lovely" is easier and more-accessible; compared to those this lengthy "Long Goodbye" is more personal, heavy, smart, sad, and heartful.
Verdict: I'll have a hard time expressing exactly what it is about "The Long Goodbye" that works so well. The sad, hardnosed, reluctant quest for truth doesn't get rougher; it isn't the law or the circumstances that are most disappointing to us, it is people. But it is also interactions with people that give inner strength and support. Just a great American novel.
Jeff's Rating: 5 / 5 (Excellent)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13
Playback:
Private Eye Philip Marlowe is hired to trail a woman and find out what she's up to. He has a description and knows she'll be on a train out of LA, but doesn't know her name or the details of why he's supposed to follow her. Marlowe finds that the woman is being blackmailed by some fancy scumbag and Marlowe's cynical romantic urban knight tendencies have him walking the line between simply fulfilling his obligation to his employer and lending the lady a hand at the same time.
The last of the seven Marlowe detective mysteries, and the final novel written by Chandler before he died, "Playback" (1958) I see is generally regarded as the weakest in this classic series. It is shorter than the rest of them, it doesn't have the at-times too-complex interwoven character beats, it doesn't have the same biting social commentary, and it is set in a quaint and rural oceanside town called Esmerelda instead of Los Angeles.
Verdict: A smart and short noir detective mystery with a great protagonist, shady characters, and untrustworthy dames. "Playback" isn't set in the seedy immersive Los Angeles that the other Marlowe mysteries are, and the pacing seems to be a bit off, but it is a worthy ending to a great classic series, and when it ended I wished there were more I could read.
Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: R
Rounding out the Later Novels and Other Writings collection, the editor includes the Chandler-co-written script for the classic noir film "Double Indemnity" and some other interesting essays and letters which touch a number of issues, like dealing with Hollywood, mystery writing in general and detective mysteries specifically, murder fiction, his thoughts on other authors of the time like Doyle, Hammet, Sayers, Forester, and Christie, the importance of authenticity in the story's details, some point-by-point take-downs of highly-regarded mysteries, and others.
In one interesting thread, Chandler speaks of the push and pull between "really important books" and those that actually sell, reminding me of Scorcese's recent comment that modern day comic book movies aren't actually "cinema;" it is interesting to look back while Chandler is speaking as one on the non-cinema edge of the table, if you will. He is not as much respected at the time as a "real author" because he was writing these pulp crime stories before his ground-breaking hard-core American mysteries at a time when even Chandler admits the English detective form dominates the genre. Now most regard Chandler as one of the best mystery writers of all time on the other side of that table, and one that shows a great writer at times can bridge that gap between art and entertainment.
If you are an author yourself, I recommend checking out "The Simple Art of Murder" and "Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story," two short essays that might help with your work.
Averaging out the ratings we get a 4.25 and since only 8% of all my reviews are five-stars I'm going to admit this should round up to 5/5. Two of my five favorite books of all time are in this one volume.
The Library of America's volume 2 of Raymond Chandler's work contains the final four Philip Marlowe novels, the Chandler-written script for the noir classic film "Double Indemnity," and some other Chandler essays and letters. Here are my reviews for each:
The Lady in the Lake:
LA PI Phillip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy man to find his estranged wife, a money-spending floozy who sent him a telegraph a month prior stating her intention to divorce and remarry another man, but the divorce and marriage meanwhile have not happened and the guy wants to know what happened to her.
Marlowe's investigation takes him into the mountains surrounding LA, a cabin property held by his client where there's a lake and, of course, a dead body.
As Marlowe moves from player to player, is accosted by cops, has suspicions backed up or shot down as he runs them by other investigators, and as he comes upon people in various stages of compromise, we get a desperate lone sarcastic knight vibe, a guy placing discretion equal to to truth and both over position and power. The female side characters in this are varying degrees of innocence and danger as in prior Chandler mysteries, never revealing all their cards but always holding a vulnerable reckless edge and who are all possibly capable of just stabbing him in the back.
The fourth in the Marlowe series, "The Lady in the Lake" (1943) is a more personal and weighty tale, not because we get any insight into Marlowe's background or relationships (we don't) but because we can see the impact of this case on him, and perhaps of the opening stage of WWII on Chandler (this was written right after Pearl Harbor and takes place in 1942). The world is an evil place, we can trust no one, the righteous are concerned with ulterior motives but also still desperate to help others, no one will respond to a question without it being at most a guarded half-truth, everyone is seeking honest companionship they know doesn't exist, and we're all in this adventure in life together but alone. It is a perfectly-paced and focused mystery from start to finish.
Verdict: A classic noir detective whodunit with a great protagonist by a smart author at the top of his game.
Jeff's Rating: 5 / 5 (Excellent)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13
The Little Sister:
Investigator Phillip Marlowe is hired by a young woman to find her brother, who came to big bad LA months ago from Kansas and has stopped writing home. When visiting the brother's most recent boarding house to look for him, Marlowe meets one shady character and then finds a dead body with an ice pick murder weapon still in his neck.
Marlowe ends up in Golden Era Hollywood culture and social situations with a mobbed up blackmailer and studio agent trying to keep one of his young actress's wholesome image intact.
Verdict: A good noir crime mystery, "The Little Sister" (1949) is Chandler's biting love/hate take on Hollywood's phony nobility, with smart personal entanglements and edged dialogue. Marlowe is that hard-working investigator who mostly serves as our guide to mischief, a half-step behind and usually too late to correct all these wrongs.
Jeff's Rating: 3 / 5 (Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13
The Long Goodbye:
LA Private Eye Phillip Marlowe has befriended a down-and-out drunk named Terry Lennox. Lennox is spiraling into a gentlemanly debt-adding depression, possibly over his wife's openly adulterous behavior and his inability to keep her respectable. When the woman ends up dead, Marlowe is roughed up by cops looking for Lennox and then he finds the police and city's powers-that-be just want the whole murder and scandal swept under the rug, which rankles Marlowe because he's not even sure Lennox killed the woman.
A second case comes along and Marlowe is enlisted by a beautiful lady and her husband's book publisher to find her husband, who has been having recurring lapses in alcoholic benders and not finishing his latest work.
The sixth book of the Marlowe detective series, "The Long Goodbye" resonates with its perfect dialogue, murky LA setting, sarcastically grounded wit, righteous investigation and discretion for those who fit one of Marlowe's many subconscious soft spots, futility at trying to curb someone's self-destructive habits, and most notably a quick and damning disdain for those who take advantage of the weak or noble, something we all recognize easier with middle-age.
Among classic noir mysteries and the Chandler-written Marlowe stories specifically (I've now read six of the seven), I'd say "The Big Sleep" is better regarded by most readers, "The Lady in the Lake" is a better-paced and plotted mystery for me, and "Farewell, My Lovely" is easier and more-accessible; compared to those this lengthy "Long Goodbye" is more personal, heavy, smart, sad, and heartful.
Verdict: I'll have a hard time expressing exactly what it is about "The Long Goodbye" that works so well. The sad, hardnosed, reluctant quest for truth doesn't get rougher; it isn't the law or the circumstances that are most disappointing to us, it is people. But it is also interactions with people that give inner strength and support. Just a great American novel.
Jeff's Rating: 5 / 5 (Excellent)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13
Playback:
Private Eye Philip Marlowe is hired to trail a woman and find out what she's up to. He has a description and knows she'll be on a train out of LA, but doesn't know her name or the details of why he's supposed to follow her. Marlowe finds that the woman is being blackmailed by some fancy scumbag and Marlowe's cynical romantic urban knight tendencies have him walking the line between simply fulfilling his obligation to his employer and lending the lady a hand at the same time.
The last of the seven Marlowe detective mysteries, and the final novel written by Chandler before he died, "Playback" (1958) I see is generally regarded as the weakest in this classic series. It is shorter than the rest of them, it doesn't have the at-times too-complex interwoven character beats, it doesn't have the same biting social commentary, and it is set in a quaint and rural oceanside town called Esmerelda instead of Los Angeles.
Verdict: A smart and short noir detective mystery with a great protagonist, shady characters, and untrustworthy dames. "Playback" isn't set in the seedy immersive Los Angeles that the other Marlowe mysteries are, and the pacing seems to be a bit off, but it is a worthy ending to a great classic series, and when it ended I wished there were more I could read.
Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: R
Rounding out the Later Novels and Other Writings collection, the editor includes the Chandler-co-written script for the classic noir film "Double Indemnity" and some other interesting essays and letters which touch a number of issues, like dealing with Hollywood, mystery writing in general and detective mysteries specifically, murder fiction, his thoughts on other authors of the time like Doyle, Hammet, Sayers, Forester, and Christie, the importance of authenticity in the story's details, some point-by-point take-downs of highly-regarded mysteries, and others.
In one interesting thread, Chandler speaks of the push and pull between "really important books" and those that actually sell, reminding me of Scorcese's recent comment that modern day comic book movies aren't actually "cinema;" it is interesting to look back while Chandler is speaking as one on the non-cinema edge of the table, if you will. He is not as much respected at the time as a "real author" because he was writing these pulp crime stories before his ground-breaking hard-core American mysteries at a time when even Chandler admits the English detective form dominates the genre. Now most regard Chandler as one of the best mystery writers of all time on the other side of that table, and one that shows a great writer at times can bridge that gap between art and entertainment.
If you are an author yourself, I recommend checking out "The Simple Art of Murder" and "Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story," two short essays that might help with your work.
Averaging out the ratings we get a 4.25 and since only 8% of all my reviews are five-stars I'm going to admit this should round up to 5/5. Two of my five favorite books of all time are in this one volume.
April 12, 2018
This book took me by surprise. Chandler is an author who I like and to some degree study because of his early influence on the hardboiled genre. I was just looking for a quick and inexpensive way to read my last unread Philip Marlow story, Playback. I didn't realize there was an anthology like this. If I have a problem, its that there are so few Selected Notes and Essays.
Firstly, this Library of America book edition is beautiful. I've become accustomed to purchasing or reading books which are either disposable paper products, like Kleenex or virtual envelopes for 'content'. This book reminds me of a hymnal in its durability and heft. It has a thick pasteboard cover and a sewn binding. There is an indigo colored, thin, cloth ribbon sewn into the binding for place holding included. The pages are thin and translucent with crisp well defined print. I want to wash my hands before flipping the pages of this book. I've taken to scrupulously avoiding eating and drinking while reading it. Frankly, I had forgotten the tactile pleasure of reading a well-made book.
Included in this book are:
+ The Lady in the Lake
+ The Little Sister (my review)
+ The Long Goodbye
+ Playback (my review)
+ Screen play for Double Indemnity (1944).
I did not read all the books included, having read some of them previously.
In addition to the stories, the Selected Notes and Essays provide a lot of insight into and information on the author. For example, he had a checkered career, was a philanderer, an alcoholic and died from alcoholism. The Essays are helpful in separating Chandler's true voice from the books. These were written when he was very cynical about his craft and success later in his life. Of the Letters, I found those written to Hamish Hamilton his British publisher to be the most entertaining. 'The Facts of Philip Marlowe's Life' to J. D. Ibberson is helpful in seeing how the author pictured Marlowe. Finally, the Chronology describes the author's life events, including publishing history and scant information on the roots of some stories. For example, he only met Dashell Hammett, one of the few authors he admired once in person.
If you have an extraordinary interest in Raymond Chandler, this is a book to read. In a single, physically impressive volume it puts in one place the later half of the Marlowe series and enough biographical information and non-fiction pieces to satisfy curiosity about the author. I'm pleased I found it.
Having read this, which is volume 2 of 2, I'm curious about the first volume Chandler: Stories and Early Novels.
Firstly, this Library of America book edition is beautiful. I've become accustomed to purchasing or reading books which are either disposable paper products, like Kleenex or virtual envelopes for 'content'. This book reminds me of a hymnal in its durability and heft. It has a thick pasteboard cover and a sewn binding. There is an indigo colored, thin, cloth ribbon sewn into the binding for place holding included. The pages are thin and translucent with crisp well defined print. I want to wash my hands before flipping the pages of this book. I've taken to scrupulously avoiding eating and drinking while reading it. Frankly, I had forgotten the tactile pleasure of reading a well-made book.
Included in this book are:
+ The Lady in the Lake
+ The Little Sister (my review)
+ The Long Goodbye
+ Playback (my review)
+ Screen play for Double Indemnity (1944).
I did not read all the books included, having read some of them previously.
In addition to the stories, the Selected Notes and Essays provide a lot of insight into and information on the author. For example, he had a checkered career, was a philanderer, an alcoholic and died from alcoholism. The Essays are helpful in separating Chandler's true voice from the books. These were written when he was very cynical about his craft and success later in his life. Of the Letters, I found those written to Hamish Hamilton his British publisher to be the most entertaining. 'The Facts of Philip Marlowe's Life' to J. D. Ibberson is helpful in seeing how the author pictured Marlowe. Finally, the Chronology describes the author's life events, including publishing history and scant information on the roots of some stories. For example, he only met Dashell Hammett, one of the few authors he admired once in person.
If you have an extraordinary interest in Raymond Chandler, this is a book to read. In a single, physically impressive volume it puts in one place the later half of the Marlowe series and enough biographical information and non-fiction pieces to satisfy curiosity about the author. I'm pleased I found it.
Having read this, which is volume 2 of 2, I'm curious about the first volume Chandler: Stories and Early Novels.
August 26, 2023
The novels in this collection have all the strengths of the earlier, but add a greater level of character and emotional impact. I had previously read The Long Goodbye, which I love, but of the others The Lady in the Lake seemed almost as good.
The Long Goodbye seems to be generally regarded as Chandler's best, and it lives up to that reputation for me. It illustrates the argument of several of the essays included at the end of the volume, that a story dependent on a labyrinthine plot, in which the author tries to trick the reader, is the most boring form of mystery. The "mystery" of The Long Goodbye is fairly straightforward, and the final revelation is satisfying because of what it means for the characters rather than for the plot. Most of the pleasure comes from the quiet moments that have little to do with the bustle of the plot, like a enjoying a gimlet in a bar before it fills up for the evening.
Update August 2023
This time I re-read each of the novels except The Long Goodbye
The Lady in the Lake
As mentioned above, this was good. One thing that makes it stand out is the wartime setting. It's not a big deal for plot purposes, but it marks this as the only Chandler novel that has a really distinct chronological setting. I also like that all the characters, even the murderer, are fairly sympathetic despite their flaws.
The Little Sister
I've never like this one as much. I think it's because it leans into Hollywood business a little too much. It might all be perfectly accurate, but they feel like stereotypes or things that (at this point) have been overdone). To be fair, I have no idea how it would have seemed in 1949 when the book was first published.
Playback
I can't remember if I read this before, but it's not great. The plot is pretty unsatisfying, in that it sets up one mystery that turns out to be nothing while the real action has been almost entirely behind the scenes. I don't fully understand the Betty Mayfield character. The social critique seems less sharp, especially given that the one extended description of the power dynamic in the town of Esmeralda centers on a character/family we never meet. I also really didn't care for the more explicit sexuality, which felt out of character for Marlowe.
The Long Goodbye seems to be generally regarded as Chandler's best, and it lives up to that reputation for me. It illustrates the argument of several of the essays included at the end of the volume, that a story dependent on a labyrinthine plot, in which the author tries to trick the reader, is the most boring form of mystery. The "mystery" of The Long Goodbye is fairly straightforward, and the final revelation is satisfying because of what it means for the characters rather than for the plot. Most of the pleasure comes from the quiet moments that have little to do with the bustle of the plot, like a enjoying a gimlet in a bar before it fills up for the evening.
Update August 2023
This time I re-read each of the novels except The Long Goodbye
The Lady in the Lake
As mentioned above, this was good. One thing that makes it stand out is the wartime setting. It's not a big deal for plot purposes, but it marks this as the only Chandler novel that has a really distinct chronological setting. I also like that all the characters, even the murderer, are fairly sympathetic despite their flaws.
The Little Sister
I've never like this one as much. I think it's because it leans into Hollywood business a little too much. It might all be perfectly accurate, but they feel like stereotypes or things that (at this point) have been overdone). To be fair, I have no idea how it would have seemed in 1949 when the book was first published.
Playback
I can't remember if I read this before, but it's not great. The plot is pretty unsatisfying, in that it sets up one mystery that turns out to be nothing while the real action has been almost entirely behind the scenes. I don't fully understand the Betty Mayfield character. The social critique seems less sharp, especially given that the one extended description of the power dynamic in the town of Esmeralda centers on a character/family we never meet. I also really didn't care for the more explicit sexuality, which felt out of character for Marlowe.
November 12, 2018
A rare collection with no weak links. The Long Goodbye and Double Indemnity are familiar to even casual fans of noir and I think I prefer the screen treatment of Indemnity to the book (rare, I know). The first two novels are both prime Chandler, if not as well known as some others. Playback was a pleasant surprise, if just for the ending / postscript.
.
Just a very solid collection, as with all the Library of America titles.
.
Just a very solid collection, as with all the Library of America titles.
August 17, 2010
Absolute A+ This is a must have book for anyone interested in writing. Contained in a single volume are: four amazing novels (The Long Goodbye may be his greatest work), a screen play written with Billy Wilder for James Cain's Double Indemnity, Chandler's wildly abusive and wonderful essays on writing, and select letters (which are formidible and long and full of appropriate amounts of self doubt to make even the weakest among us take heart).
Have fun! - Watch the movie after reading the book... The Lady in the Lake is a loo-loo, but Altman's Long Goodbye is a fascinating neo-noir. Double Indemnity is a classic - I love how they meet in the grocery store and talk to the cans near each other! Thank you Library of America.
Have fun! - Watch the movie after reading the book... The Lady in the Lake is a loo-loo, but Altman's Long Goodbye is a fascinating neo-noir. Double Indemnity is a classic - I love how they meet in the grocery store and talk to the cans near each other! Thank you Library of America.
May 23, 2021
I've read and reread all the stories, now with this book I will have some essays too. That's how I can give it a 5 star rating without having read every page. And now I have. Chandler is like fine music. You listen to it, you think you know it. Later you listen again [in this case read again] and it is like listening to it for the first time.
That's a real gift
That's a real gift
August 28, 2007
absolutely fantastic example of detective fiction. every line marlowe spits out is self-depricating, witty, and sassy as all get out. dirty, fun fiction.
November 28, 2008
He's a master of the crime novel and one of the best writers at succinct, lively description I've ever seen. I'd love to be half as good.
July 19, 2018
Chandler is one of my favorite writers. Like top 3. But upon reading the essays and letters that ended this volume I've come to realize he was bitter old bastard. The world is a cesspool and it's peopled with utter morons. He was as arrogant as he was mean. While his famed PI, Marlowe, sees the world as cynically as he does, Marlowe has a saving grace: he's better than the world. In one of the letters, Chandler says something along the lines of, even though the world has lost its integrity that doesn't mean Marlowe has. That's one of the reasons I love Chandler's writings, he helped create a genre filled with violence and corruption but his protagonist sticks to his morals. And not some twisted perversion of morals either.
The other thing I love about his writing, is his way with words. So, I'll end this review with some of my favorite quotes from this volume:
"She concentrated. That gave her something to do with her eyebrows." p.211
"She smelled the way the Taj Majah looks by moonlight." p.260
"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself." p.488
"...the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket." p.740
"Guns never settle anything...They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act." p. 756
"On the dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis." p. 771
"[He] smiled - very slightly. Call it a down payment on a smile." p. 825
"Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur." (talking about Hollywood producers) p. 997
The other thing I love about his writing, is his way with words. So, I'll end this review with some of my favorite quotes from this volume:
"She concentrated. That gave her something to do with her eyebrows." p.211
"She smelled the way the Taj Majah looks by moonlight." p.260
"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself." p.488
"...the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket." p.740
"Guns never settle anything...They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act." p. 756
"On the dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis." p. 771
"[He] smiled - very slightly. Call it a down payment on a smile." p. 825
"Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur." (talking about Hollywood producers) p. 997
June 28, 2023
I have been obsessed with Chandler and his protagonist, Philip Marlowe, for most of my life. Now, I wonder if the character and the works he traipses through are best taken in dramatic form, where actors can breath life into what would now be called a Mary Sue--Chandler's Marlowe is just too good and too perfect to be believable or frankly interesting. In the correspondence in this volume Chandler lays out his fiction-writing philosophy, and for him dialogue and set pieces are more important than the overarching plot. I think the elements are too out of balance, and for most of the novels I just found myself not caring about Marlowe or the byzantine mystery he is unfolding. The best of the novels is Long Goodbye, where characterization and narrative are more in-synch, Chandler does not go into contortions trying to fit the narrative around what he wants to do with the characters. The Long Goodbye is also interesting because Chandler is starting to register the massive social changes of the 20th century USA, such as the rise of television and fast food, and the human wreckage left by military service during WWII. Although its probably less than 15 years since The Big Sleep, it seems like we are a long way from that novel.
In his correspondence Chandler does not come off very well; he is thin-skinned, full of false modesty and clearly thinks he is the best mystery writer (and maybe just best writer) of all time. He gives zero fucks about social issues, despite his novels' vague indictment of societal corruption.
In his correspondence Chandler does not come off very well; he is thin-skinned, full of false modesty and clearly thinks he is the best mystery writer (and maybe just best writer) of all time. He gives zero fucks about social issues, despite his novels' vague indictment of societal corruption.
January 31, 2019
I just reread all of Raymond Chandler’s novels and here is a quick summary:
What stays the SAME
-Smoking everywhere, homes, clubs, bars, restaurants, cars
-Rich women always are the killers
-The coffee is always good
-Alcohol all the time. Marlowe imbibes continuously, but only passes out when he wants/needs to
-Men must be tough: muscles must develop from work-boxing etc, not from rich-man gym exercise or tennis
-Writing is tight;
-Murders are not messy, conversations are.
-There is no middle class: only the rich and the lowlifes. In two books Marlowe speaks of how he could have ended up succeeding in small time business, and as a husband and father in the mid-west, but with a brain and life of cement.
What DIMINISHES:
-LA cops get less thuggish
-Racist slurs
-The descriptions of the settings get less elaborate
-The descriptions of the characters are more concise
What INCREASES:
-Plots get more convoluted
-Phil Marlowe gets more women
-Chandler’s drinking
What stays the SAME
-Smoking everywhere, homes, clubs, bars, restaurants, cars
-Rich women always are the killers
-The coffee is always good
-Alcohol all the time. Marlowe imbibes continuously, but only passes out when he wants/needs to
-Men must be tough: muscles must develop from work-boxing etc, not from rich-man gym exercise or tennis
-Writing is tight;
-Murders are not messy, conversations are.
-There is no middle class: only the rich and the lowlifes. In two books Marlowe speaks of how he could have ended up succeeding in small time business, and as a husband and father in the mid-west, but with a brain and life of cement.
What DIMINISHES:
-LA cops get less thuggish
-Racist slurs
-The descriptions of the settings get less elaborate
-The descriptions of the characters are more concise
What INCREASES:
-Plots get more convoluted
-Phil Marlowe gets more women
-Chandler’s drinking
April 28, 2021
Just a quick note: this review only applies to the story I just finished reading in this collection, “The Long Goodbye,” not the entire collection.
I’ve read two of the other novels in this collection previously.
Like all of Chandler’s mysteries, this one is gritty, filled with great prose, convoluted and complex… But even given the fact that his stories wind and twist in so many unexpected ways, there’s a real twist at the end I just did not see coming.
This particular story also opens the door for a later story that Chandler only wrote four chapters for before passing away, and then it was completed eventually by Robert B. Parker (“Poodle Springs”) and published in 1989. That novel was later made into a TV movie featuring James Caan as Philip Marlowe.
But back to this story: if you’re a Chandler fan, this novel will not disappoint. It has everything you’ve come to expect in a Philip Marlowe detective story.
I’ve read two of the other novels in this collection previously.
Like all of Chandler’s mysteries, this one is gritty, filled with great prose, convoluted and complex… But even given the fact that his stories wind and twist in so many unexpected ways, there’s a real twist at the end I just did not see coming.
This particular story also opens the door for a later story that Chandler only wrote four chapters for before passing away, and then it was completed eventually by Robert B. Parker (“Poodle Springs”) and published in 1989. That novel was later made into a TV movie featuring James Caan as Philip Marlowe.
But back to this story: if you’re a Chandler fan, this novel will not disappoint. It has everything you’ve come to expect in a Philip Marlowe detective story.
Read
September 30, 2019Chandler establishes the bar that all other hard boiled mystery writers must meet.
April 6, 2020
Four late novels, a screenplay, and selected essays and letters by the master of noir detective fiction.
August 3, 2020
Classic crime stories. Felt like watching Bogie and Bacall all over again.
May 17, 2023
En realidad leí Si no late de Hernán Lasque pero como goodreads no lo tiene este es el que salta en su lugar :(
March 31, 2025
These are just plain fun.
February 13, 2010
This is going to have to be a five-in-one review for (i) The Lady in the Lake; (ii) The Little Sister; (iii) The Long Goodbye; (iv) Playback and perhaps some of the essays in this collection. I loved how this volume I picked up at the library is one of those navy blue cloth-bound Library of America editions. And I suppose that there's an inscription just inside the cover that reads "With the friendship of the people of the United States of America, US Embassy Singapore" signifies Chandler's standing in the American literary pantheon.
It's been a while since I've read a mystery novel and I believe it's my first time reading an American mystery novel at that. My earlier encounters with the genre were limited to Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle and GK Chesterton. Philip Marlowe is quite a stark difference from Poirot, Holmes and (definitely) Miss Marple, to say the least. Your stereotypical hard-boiled American detective, portrayed in countless Hollywood productions with his square jaw, dark (but slightly battered) good looks, cigarette, battered Homburg and hard drinking ways. But the Lady in the Lake was fantastic. Gripping plot, good pacing and characterisation - going through the 200 pages was a breeze. 4 stars for this novel.
The Little Sister was 16 pages longer than the Lady in the Lake but it felt like 160. A friend had earlier commented that the Lady in the Lake had "a new, exciting piece of information at the end of every chapter, but he is constantly misdirecting you so that even if you did guess the ending, he's pushed so many different alternatives in front of you, tantalizingly, that you still feel like the reveal is a true revelation." I felt with the Little Sister, Chandler took this technique - which worked so well in the Lady in the Lake - to the extreme; he wove so many threads, threw in so many sub-plots and random bits of information that the plot (if you could call that loosely constructed morass a plot) unravelled into sheer pandemonium. Too much going on at the same time. Closer to the complexities of real life? Perhaps. But what's the point/fun in that? I also wanted to stab Orfamay Quest if Marlowe didn't get round to it first. 2 stars at most for this novel.
Thankfully, Chandler bounced back in the Long Goodbye, which clocked in at a whopping 317 pages. In this novel, Marlowe is embroiled in the mystery of Terry Lennox, a down-and-out man he befriends and is suspected of brutally murdering his rich wife Sylvia Potter before escaping to Mexico (with Marlowe's help) and committing suicide. Marlowe is also hired by the beautiful Eileen Wade to keep an eye on her unstable writer husband Roger. Naturally, the two stories are connected but how? 3 stars for this one.
The final novel in the collection - Playback - provides a fairly strong finish. In Playback, Marlowe is hired to follow Eleanor King/Betty Mayfield who is apparently trying to escape something in her past. Along the way, a dead body surfaces and Marlowe finds himself embroiled in yet another mystery. 3 stars for this one. [Spoiler alert:] What sets Playback apart from the other novels in the collection is that for once, there is there is no ex-husband involved in the murder.
It's been a while since I've read a mystery novel and I believe it's my first time reading an American mystery novel at that. My earlier encounters with the genre were limited to Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle and GK Chesterton. Philip Marlowe is quite a stark difference from Poirot, Holmes and (definitely) Miss Marple, to say the least. Your stereotypical hard-boiled American detective, portrayed in countless Hollywood productions with his square jaw, dark (but slightly battered) good looks, cigarette, battered Homburg and hard drinking ways. But the Lady in the Lake was fantastic. Gripping plot, good pacing and characterisation - going through the 200 pages was a breeze. 4 stars for this novel.
The Little Sister was 16 pages longer than the Lady in the Lake but it felt like 160. A friend had earlier commented that the Lady in the Lake had "a new, exciting piece of information at the end of every chapter, but he is constantly misdirecting you so that even if you did guess the ending, he's pushed so many different alternatives in front of you, tantalizingly, that you still feel like the reveal is a true revelation." I felt with the Little Sister, Chandler took this technique - which worked so well in the Lady in the Lake - to the extreme; he wove so many threads, threw in so many sub-plots and random bits of information that the plot (if you could call that loosely constructed morass a plot) unravelled into sheer pandemonium. Too much going on at the same time. Closer to the complexities of real life? Perhaps. But what's the point/fun in that? I also wanted to stab Orfamay Quest if Marlowe didn't get round to it first. 2 stars at most for this novel.
Thankfully, Chandler bounced back in the Long Goodbye, which clocked in at a whopping 317 pages. In this novel, Marlowe is embroiled in the mystery of Terry Lennox, a down-and-out man he befriends and is suspected of brutally murdering his rich wife Sylvia Potter before escaping to Mexico (with Marlowe's help) and committing suicide. Marlowe is also hired by the beautiful Eileen Wade to keep an eye on her unstable writer husband Roger. Naturally, the two stories are connected but how? 3 stars for this one.
The final novel in the collection - Playback - provides a fairly strong finish. In Playback, Marlowe is hired to follow Eleanor King/Betty Mayfield who is apparently trying to escape something in her past. Along the way, a dead body surfaces and Marlowe finds himself embroiled in yet another mystery. 3 stars for this one. [Spoiler alert:] What sets Playback apart from the other novels in the collection is that for once, there is there is no ex-husband involved in the murder.
March 27, 2011
Who knew that I would develop such a Raymond Chandler obsession through my reading for the Vintage Mystery Challenge? I tend to read British mysteries more often and I almost never read anything set in LA but here I am, still going. And I'll probably add extras on to my list, since I have the Library of America collection of his later novels checked out from the library right now.
Anyway, I enjoyed The Lady in the Lake because it took Marlowe out of the city a bit and had a more appealing member of law enforcement--Sheriff Jim Patton. He put up with Marlowe breaking into a suspect's house very well and didn't seem so bitter against private eyes. Maybe it had something to do with his age and his rural location. He even had a card on his car that said, "Voters, Attention! Keep Jim Patton Constable. He is too old to go to work." But he still proved to be a surprisingly good shot. Add to this the twisted plot that I thought I had an early insight into and then it seemed to be wrong but then turned out to be true but twisted way worse than I imagined--great stuff.
The Little Sister was a little tougher. Marlowe seems to have reached his low point in this novel--several times he says to himself, "You're not human tonight, Marlowe." He appears to be done with LA--he describes how he used to like it, before it became a "neon-lighted slum." Also, "Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood--and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail-order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else." I wonder what he would think of it today--is it just more of the same?
I found it interesting that the female character he seemed closest to in this novel wasn't the girl next door type this time but the hard, desperate, blonde movie star. One character even hinted that he was in love with her but it's so hard to tell with Marlowe--maybe that's why I keep reading more!
Anyway, I enjoyed The Lady in the Lake because it took Marlowe out of the city a bit and had a more appealing member of law enforcement--Sheriff Jim Patton. He put up with Marlowe breaking into a suspect's house very well and didn't seem so bitter against private eyes. Maybe it had something to do with his age and his rural location. He even had a card on his car that said, "Voters, Attention! Keep Jim Patton Constable. He is too old to go to work." But he still proved to be a surprisingly good shot. Add to this the twisted plot that I thought I had an early insight into and then it seemed to be wrong but then turned out to be true but twisted way worse than I imagined--great stuff.
The Little Sister was a little tougher. Marlowe seems to have reached his low point in this novel--several times he says to himself, "You're not human tonight, Marlowe." He appears to be done with LA--he describes how he used to like it, before it became a "neon-lighted slum." Also, "Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood--and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail-order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else." I wonder what he would think of it today--is it just more of the same?
I found it interesting that the female character he seemed closest to in this novel wasn't the girl next door type this time but the hard, desperate, blonde movie star. One character even hinted that he was in love with her but it's so hard to tell with Marlowe--maybe that's why I keep reading more!
October 26, 2009
Excellent--
After reading six Chandler novels to date, I can conclude that he is awesome. In my humble opinion, his performance first peaks at Farewell My Lovely - which I think is an even better work than The Big Sleep - slumps with The High Window and The Lady in the Lake, and then recovers to the same height with The Little Sister and The Long Goodbye. I didn't bother to read Playback in this collection for reasons of circumspection based on other reviews, but I thoroughly enjoyed his hardboiled style with snappy dialogue and breakneck pace the stories unfold (with the exception of The Long Goodbye, which compensates for its meandering slowness by its sheer realism and character development rare in detective stories).
His prose, especially in The Little Sister and The Long Goodbye is simply elegant, and his dialogue superb in its liveliness and wit. I've learned so much from his style and I'm glad I immersed myself in Chandler's works.
For anyone unfamiliar with Chandler, read his absolute bests first: Farewell My Lovely and The Little Sister, and if you like it, proceed with The Big Sleep and Long Goodbye.
Enjoy the epitome of the hardboiled style.
_______________
Read June 2010: Playback and Double Indemnity
Playback, the last of Marlowe books, is actually not bad. Marlowe is perhaps jaded and don't give a fuck about anything - which I liked - and gets into these messed-up romantic relationships - which is signature Marlowe. One bit that was slightly different was the ending where Linda Loring from The Long Goodbye calls him up and asks him to marry her. All in all, an enjoyable read.
The screenplay for James M. Cain's Double Indemnity is definitely enjoyable. The awesome bantering between Walter and Phyllis is definitely Chandler's. Good stuff.
After reading six Chandler novels to date, I can conclude that he is awesome. In my humble opinion, his performance first peaks at Farewell My Lovely - which I think is an even better work than The Big Sleep - slumps with The High Window and The Lady in the Lake, and then recovers to the same height with The Little Sister and The Long Goodbye. I didn't bother to read Playback in this collection for reasons of circumspection based on other reviews, but I thoroughly enjoyed his hardboiled style with snappy dialogue and breakneck pace the stories unfold (with the exception of The Long Goodbye, which compensates for its meandering slowness by its sheer realism and character development rare in detective stories).
His prose, especially in The Little Sister and The Long Goodbye is simply elegant, and his dialogue superb in its liveliness and wit. I've learned so much from his style and I'm glad I immersed myself in Chandler's works.
For anyone unfamiliar with Chandler, read his absolute bests first: Farewell My Lovely and The Little Sister, and if you like it, proceed with The Big Sleep and Long Goodbye.
Enjoy the epitome of the hardboiled style.
_______________
Read June 2010: Playback and Double Indemnity
Playback, the last of Marlowe books, is actually not bad. Marlowe is perhaps jaded and don't give a fuck about anything - which I liked - and gets into these messed-up romantic relationships - which is signature Marlowe. One bit that was slightly different was the ending where Linda Loring from The Long Goodbye calls him up and asks him to marry her. All in all, an enjoyable read.
The screenplay for James M. Cain's Double Indemnity is definitely enjoyable. The awesome bantering between Walter and Phyllis is definitely Chandler's. Good stuff.
June 18, 2013
"If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive." -Philip Marlowe, "Playback" by Raymond Chandler
That quote to me quantifies the character of Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled detective who is the protagonist in the thread of Raymond Chandler’s noir novels contained in this collection. “The Lady in the Lake”, “The Little Sister”, “The Long Goodbye”, “Playback”, the script for “Double Indemnity”, and selected letters and essays that Chandler wrote in his life, are all exemplary stories on their own, but wonderful as read as a collection. Each story is interesting and different, but with the realism and cynical wit of Marlowe to hold them together.
Chandler paints a dark picture during the golden age of Hollywood, filled with dirty cops, drug-dealing doctors, and of course, beautiful yet manipulative (and sometimes murderous) women. But despite the darkness of the characters, and the trouble that Marlowe finds himself in, he is a character that always finds a reason to help, although sometimes reluctantly. Marlowe has an inexhaustible curiosity for finding the truth, despite personal detriment. And so many times he puts himself in harm’s way, for loyalty, a bit of honor, and a very little paycheck.
I particularly enjoyed Chandler’s personal insight into his craft of writing in Hollywood, and his personal letters. It shows a penchant for brutal honesty and realism, although with a bit of that Marlowe cynicism that seeing the darker side of life can bring. It was interesting to see how Chandler’s personal outlook influenced the character of Philip Marlowe, and however interpreted onto screen, comics, or other books throughout the years, that character remains the foundation of a good detective story.
That quote to me quantifies the character of Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled detective who is the protagonist in the thread of Raymond Chandler’s noir novels contained in this collection. “The Lady in the Lake”, “The Little Sister”, “The Long Goodbye”, “Playback”, the script for “Double Indemnity”, and selected letters and essays that Chandler wrote in his life, are all exemplary stories on their own, but wonderful as read as a collection. Each story is interesting and different, but with the realism and cynical wit of Marlowe to hold them together.
Chandler paints a dark picture during the golden age of Hollywood, filled with dirty cops, drug-dealing doctors, and of course, beautiful yet manipulative (and sometimes murderous) women. But despite the darkness of the characters, and the trouble that Marlowe finds himself in, he is a character that always finds a reason to help, although sometimes reluctantly. Marlowe has an inexhaustible curiosity for finding the truth, despite personal detriment. And so many times he puts himself in harm’s way, for loyalty, a bit of honor, and a very little paycheck.
I particularly enjoyed Chandler’s personal insight into his craft of writing in Hollywood, and his personal letters. It shows a penchant for brutal honesty and realism, although with a bit of that Marlowe cynicism that seeing the darker side of life can bring. It was interesting to see how Chandler’s personal outlook influenced the character of Philip Marlowe, and however interpreted onto screen, comics, or other books throughout the years, that character remains the foundation of a good detective story.
May 28, 2008
In this novel, Chandler's protagonist, private detective Philip Marlowe, is hired by Derace Kingsley to discover the whereabouts of Crystal, his reckless wife (who was said to have run off with her boyfriend). Marlowe's search takes him to Kingsley's lake house at Little Fawn Lake, where Crystal was last seen. It is the discovery of another missing woman's body in the lake that sends this story catapulting towards confusion.
The Lady in the Lake was written by Raymond Chandler, well-known as a successful mystery writer. It was because of his notable mystery writer status (and my love of a good mystery) that I wanted to read a book written by him, and I chose The Lady in the Lake after a fellow blogger (not one I know personally) read and recommended it.
Turns out, the book could have been better. The complicated plot criss-crossed the characters paths and the story's events so often that I frequently found myself bewildered and annoyed. I couldn't keep the characters straight (especially the females), and if you ever read the book yourself, you'll understand why. I found my mind wandering constantly and, as a result, the short novel took me quite a while to finish.
I'm not sure that I have given up on Raymond Chandler altogether. I may try reading another of his mysteries sometime in the future. For now, I am off to rent The Lady in the Lake, hoping to clear up some of the novel's "mysteries" that I am still a bit confused about. However, I will give Chandler a break for a while, and move on to something a little more straightforward.
The Lady in the Lake was written by Raymond Chandler, well-known as a successful mystery writer. It was because of his notable mystery writer status (and my love of a good mystery) that I wanted to read a book written by him, and I chose The Lady in the Lake after a fellow blogger (not one I know personally) read and recommended it.
Turns out, the book could have been better. The complicated plot criss-crossed the characters paths and the story's events so often that I frequently found myself bewildered and annoyed. I couldn't keep the characters straight (especially the females), and if you ever read the book yourself, you'll understand why. I found my mind wandering constantly and, as a result, the short novel took me quite a while to finish.
I'm not sure that I have given up on Raymond Chandler altogether. I may try reading another of his mysteries sometime in the future. For now, I am off to rent The Lady in the Lake, hoping to clear up some of the novel's "mysteries" that I am still a bit confused about. However, I will give Chandler a break for a while, and move on to something a little more straightforward.
August 17, 2011
1) The Lady in The Lake - Philip Marlowe ventures into the mountains, far from the city and finds more mystery than he bargained for. / My Take: This one surprised me a little bit. Loved the small town sheriff in it.
2) The Little Sister - Mousy little Orfamay Quest (Wow! What a name!) from Kansas wants to find her brother, Orrin. He's disappeared into Bay City (a nasty, corrupt place in Marlowe's world). Could he be the infamous ice pick murderer or is he being stalked by the real murderer?
3)The Long Goodbye - Marlowe sticks his neck way out for a friend. Will he get it back without needing too many repairs, both physically, emotionally and professionally? Is a $5,000 bill enough payment for this mess? / A cautionary tale, for sure!
4) Playback - Marlowe is hired to tail a woman who is fleeing, from what or whom we are not told, nor is Marlowe. That gets him and us sore enough to quit. But when he sees her being strong-armed by an unknown party he knows he has to help her somehow. Will he help her out of or into more trouble, or is he being played? / The dame is nuttier than a PayDay candy bar. But Marlowe doesn't seem to have anything better to do, so he dives into this adventure. He gets his full share out of it.
5) Double Indemnity - What can make a good insurance salesman go off the rails? Maybe just a glimpse of an ankle bracelet on a desirable ankle. / It rings all too true.
6) Among the essays, I particularly liked "Writers in Hollywood" (Atlantic (magazine), November 1945). It goes over why Hollywood is as it is and how it should be but can't quite be.
2) The Little Sister - Mousy little Orfamay Quest (Wow! What a name!) from Kansas wants to find her brother, Orrin. He's disappeared into Bay City (a nasty, corrupt place in Marlowe's world). Could he be the infamous ice pick murderer or is he being stalked by the real murderer?
3)The Long Goodbye - Marlowe sticks his neck way out for a friend. Will he get it back without needing too many repairs, both physically, emotionally and professionally? Is a $5,000 bill enough payment for this mess? / A cautionary tale, for sure!
4) Playback - Marlowe is hired to tail a woman who is fleeing, from what or whom we are not told, nor is Marlowe. That gets him and us sore enough to quit. But when he sees her being strong-armed by an unknown party he knows he has to help her somehow. Will he help her out of or into more trouble, or is he being played? / The dame is nuttier than a PayDay candy bar. But Marlowe doesn't seem to have anything better to do, so he dives into this adventure. He gets his full share out of it.
5) Double Indemnity - What can make a good insurance salesman go off the rails? Maybe just a glimpse of an ankle bracelet on a desirable ankle. / It rings all too true.
6) Among the essays, I particularly liked "Writers in Hollywood" (Atlantic (magazine), November 1945). It goes over why Hollywood is as it is and how it should be but can't quite be.
June 14, 2025
The Long Goodbye – *** Like all the great mysteries, this is an exciting read. I had a hard time setting it down (though it is a pretty long novel for a mystery). The praise for it is much deserved. It is a twisting and rambling story full of oddball characters and strange situations.
I have to admit, though, I have a hard time understanding anything Marlowe does. You want characters – and action – to be unpredictable, but to some extent you want to know the character and understand his or her motives and actions. From Marlowe’s time in jail, to his publishing of the suicide note, I couldn’t understand him, let alone predict anything he might do.
** SPOILER ALERT **
For example, he published the suicide note to …? Smoke out Lennox? Really? Embarrass a bunch of people? He risked life and limb for these reasons? Strange. And Lennox himself is a complete mystery I couldn’t understand. Why did he run off? And what was Eileen’s motive for her husband’s murder? I’m not sure.
Maybe it’s best not to think too carefully about these novels. It’s an entertaining ride. It doesn’t have to be anything more. (12/15)
Double Indemnity -- *** I was never really convinced by the characters – Neff or Phyllis. The love story/murder plan seems so whimsical and out of the blue. From there, the script is more of a suspense story than a mystery. I’ve never seen the movie, but I will shortly. (06-25)
I have to admit, though, I have a hard time understanding anything Marlowe does. You want characters – and action – to be unpredictable, but to some extent you want to know the character and understand his or her motives and actions. From Marlowe’s time in jail, to his publishing of the suicide note, I couldn’t understand him, let alone predict anything he might do.
** SPOILER ALERT **
For example, he published the suicide note to …? Smoke out Lennox? Really? Embarrass a bunch of people? He risked life and limb for these reasons? Strange. And Lennox himself is a complete mystery I couldn’t understand. Why did he run off? And what was Eileen’s motive for her husband’s murder? I’m not sure.
Maybe it’s best not to think too carefully about these novels. It’s an entertaining ride. It doesn’t have to be anything more. (12/15)
Double Indemnity -- *** I was never really convinced by the characters – Neff or Phyllis. The love story/murder plan seems so whimsical and out of the blue. From there, the script is more of a suspense story than a mystery. I’ve never seen the movie, but I will shortly. (06-25)
May 26, 2008
I was never into pulp novels until I read this collection. This edition is a great introduction to Raymond Chandler and especially the Marlowe character. I expected straight ahead genre fiction when I started reading, but by the end of The Long Goodbye I was amazed that not only were all the detective genre elements really well done, but Phillip Marlowe had become one of my favorite characters in literature. It's easy to view him as a sad sack, but his insistence on honesty and loyalty to friends never came off as two dimensional, and over the course of several mystery novels I began to understand the character more and more. Finally, Chandler's depiction of LA and its rural and suburban surroundings is incredibly well done. It opened me up more to David Lynch's depiction of the city as well, and I began to see how alike the director is to Raymond Chandler. If you're looking to only selectively read, I think you can get away with just The Lady in the Lake and The Long Goodybe - but the more you read of the other novels the more poignant the decisions Marlowe makes in The Long Goodbye become.
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