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pineapplefury 's review for:
Farewell, My Lovely
by Raymond Chandler
I read this book mostly as research for my own murder mystery, which I want to inject with noir flavour, and to me Raymond Chandler is the ultimate old school noir writer. I've read The Big Sleep multiple times (all of which for different undergrad classes) and thought it was fun, though having some flaws that speak to the time in which it was written (and also the fact that one murder in it just straight up doesn't get solved, which remains hilarious to me).
Anyway, I like Chandler's style. Marlowe is a weirdly likeable character despite all his flaws, and I find the experience of reading these books to be pretty entertaining. I also have found that his female characters tend to be pretty interesting, and allowed to be complex in ways that seem rare even for the modern day.
Of course, there's still some issues. This book in particular suffers from era-typical racism in similar ways that The Big Sleep suffers from era-typical homophobia, which is not great. Mostly what I want to learn from Chandler is style, so I can turn it to my own noir murder mystery, which is of course queer as hell.
Anyway, I like Chandler's style. Marlowe is a weirdly likeable character despite all his flaws, and I find the experience of reading these books to be pretty entertaining. I also have found that his female characters tend to be pretty interesting, and allowed to be complex in ways that seem rare even for the modern day.
Of course, there's still some issues. This book in particular suffers from era-typical racism in similar ways that The Big Sleep suffers from era-typical homophobia, which is not great. Mostly what I want to learn from Chandler is style, so I can turn it to my own noir murder mystery, which is of course queer as hell.