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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My first Chandler and I’m hooked. Yes there’s some language that’s very much of its time but Marlowe as a character has a lot of integrity and there certainly isn’t the casual misogyny you find in Fleming, for instance. The turns of phrase are the stuff of legend.
Hard. Boiled.
Hard. Boiled.
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was surprised by how funny and smart Chandler is. Not only that, but I was intrigued by the blatant homoerotic undertones. A queer hard-boiled detective? Hell yeah; if hard-boiled dicks are known for living by there own moral compass and to hell with the rest of the world, it seems the perfect genre to explore themes of queerness.
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
I just don't think this was a very cohesive story. It kind of meanders wherever it wants and you're left wondering why his editor allowed him to keep certain scenes and characters in. There are some good parts for sure, but I think Chandler sits on a rare shelf of writers that straddle literature and genre writing--this one leaning towards the latter.
I guess I could forgive him for the kind of racially uncomfortable beginning if it really made sense in context of the story. It comes off more like he's just taking a swipe at black people as it stands. To be fair, he swipes at everyone kind of unrelentingly but I felt like it was just unnecessarily invoking stereotypes more than pushing forward some greater plot point.
In short: it's just not as good as The Big Sleep.
I guess I could forgive him for the kind of racially uncomfortable beginning if it really made sense in context of the story. It comes off more like he's just taking a swipe at black people as it stands. To be fair, he swipes at everyone kind of unrelentingly but I felt like it was just unnecessarily invoking stereotypes more than pushing forward some greater plot point.
In short: it's just not as good as The Big Sleep.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
If you can get past the casual racism towards the Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Italian people in this book, you're in for quite a ride. Detectives don't come more hardboiled than Philip Marlowe, a man who is beaten up, drugged, kidnapped, and otherwise mistreated on seemingly every other page, yet rebounds by simply taking a couple of drinks and getting a bit of sleep. Finding out that this book is a bit of a fix up of three earlier short stories helps one understand why there are several plot threads that don't necessarily meld easily at the end, but I think that's part of the book's charm--it doesn't follow a conventional mystery format, which, added to the deliberate red herrings, produces a story that mostly plays fair with the reader (there is one important clue conveniently left to the very end) but makes it challenging to guess what's really going on. The other part of the book's charm is Chandler's florid metaphors and descriptions, lampooned many times since, but certainly a big part of the reader's enjoyment.
Chandler is simply a joy to read. He’s the standard to which all other crime fiction writers are held. He’s a good model for all writers, if you ask me. If you don’t like it, you don’t like the genre. Every page is brimming with mood, setting and great dialogue. I like how he carefully describes each character as they are introduced, and he paints each scene remarkably well. I once told my kids that a great book can conjure up such vivid images in your head that it’s as if you’re watching a movie, and that’s the miracle of reading. Chandler is one of the best in that regard.
In this one, Marlowe is on the trail of a missing torch singer, and so is her ex, and enormous brute named Moose Malloy. The trail leads to jewel thieves, big time gamblers, a mysterious fortune teller, crooked cops, drug dealers, gorgeous dames, and the usual cast of colorful secondary characters. I have learned that many of Chandler’s novels were cobbled together from some of his short stories. After finishing this one, I felt like I read two stories. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but readers looking for every plot point to tie nicely together at the end may be a bit surprised.
There are plenty of great lines and passages in this one, of course. Many can be found in the sidebar on GoodReads. This one had me grinning from ear to ear:
“We went down three steps to the living room. The carpet almost tickled my ankles. There was a concert grand piano, closed down. On one corner of it stood a tall silver vase on a strip of peach colored velvet, and a single yellow rose in the vase. There was plenty of nice soft furniture, a great many floor cushions, some with gold tassels and some just naked. It was a nice room if you didn’t get rough. It was the kind of room where people sit with their feet in their laps and sip absinthe through lumps of sugar and talk with high affected voices and sometimes just squeak. It was a room where anything could happen except work.”
Ah, Marlowe!!!
In this one, Marlowe is on the trail of a missing torch singer, and so is her ex, and enormous brute named Moose Malloy. The trail leads to jewel thieves, big time gamblers, a mysterious fortune teller, crooked cops, drug dealers, gorgeous dames, and the usual cast of colorful secondary characters. I have learned that many of Chandler’s novels were cobbled together from some of his short stories. After finishing this one, I felt like I read two stories. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but readers looking for every plot point to tie nicely together at the end may be a bit surprised.
There are plenty of great lines and passages in this one, of course. Many can be found in the sidebar on GoodReads. This one had me grinning from ear to ear:
“We went down three steps to the living room. The carpet almost tickled my ankles. There was a concert grand piano, closed down. On one corner of it stood a tall silver vase on a strip of peach colored velvet, and a single yellow rose in the vase. There was plenty of nice soft furniture, a great many floor cushions, some with gold tassels and some just naked. It was a nice room if you didn’t get rough. It was the kind of room where people sit with their feet in their laps and sip absinthe through lumps of sugar and talk with high affected voices and sometimes just squeak. It was a room where anything could happen except work.”
Ah, Marlowe!!!
The sarcasm throughout the book is used to great effect in Chandler’s descriptions. This probably why I read him. The book is racist and dark and twisted. It seems to me that the story is much darker then “The Big Sleep”. If you enjoy noir I think you’ll enjoy this. Personally I’d prefer something a little lighter, something like Christopher Moore’s “Noir” which I read recently and enjoyed so much I thought I’d give the real thing a try.
After I take some time to recover I think I'll try the next book in the series.
The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.
She poured us some more Scotch. It didn't seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam.
She began to laugh---a high-pitched old woman's laugh. "April Fool's Day," she tittered. "Maybe she won't get it." I left her laughing. The sound was like a hen having hiccups.
After I take some time to recover I think I'll try the next book in the series.