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A review by rbreade
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Chandler has this wonderful way of tossing seemingly unrelated incidents or even cases in Marlowe's path and slowly showing his tenacious detective find the links and connections between those incidents, like an island chain that, deep on the ocean floor, is really all part of the same land mass.
The first incident happens right away, when Marlowe accidentally crosses paths with a guy named Malloy who's just out of prison after eight years and is looking for a woman named Velma, a singer he's still in love with. Here's Chandler, at his most Chandleresque, describing Malloy: "He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck." This sort of linguistic dexterity, employed on people and on Los Angeles itself, is the main attraction for me, even more so than watching the Marlowe peel back the layers of mystery: Chandler often works like this, via understatement, decoy, and paradox, which gives each page several jolts of brilliance. Not more than 6' 5", and not wider than a beer truck. The nots ice the deal here. Soon after this, he meets Mrs. Florian, who is "as cute as a washtub." He never seems to run out of this material, and you can practically hear Humphrey Bogart snapping off such lines.
The other incident involves the theft of a jade necklace from Lewin Grayle, the young wife of an elderly investment banker, and the subject of a favorite Chandlerism: "It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." We follow Marlowe as he traces the ownership of a particular house, explores the firing of an honest police captain in the corrupt town of nearby bay City years ago, and extracts a clue from the paper mouthpiece of a "juju," what we would know as a joint or a reefer, among other feats of sleuthwork. Los Angeles of the 1940s comes alive on almost every page. Plus, Marlowe, who is a reader, a chess player, and a music aficionado, though the reader only picks this up in the beats and margins of Chandler's wonderful prose, delivers a harsh opinion on Hemingway that I wonder if his creator shared:
Detective Galbraith: "Who is this Hemingway person at all?"
Marlowe: "A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good."
If you want the crux of the mystery, read this spoiler.
If you skip the spoiler, or even if you don't, the book is that rarity: a mystery you can read more than once; the language is that crisp and terrific.
Oh, and if you do read it, keep an eye peeled for the pink-headed bug. It's both objective correlative and symbol in one tiny, relentless package.
The first incident happens right away, when Marlowe accidentally crosses paths with a guy named Malloy who's just out of prison after eight years and is looking for a woman named Velma, a singer he's still in love with. Here's Chandler, at his most Chandleresque, describing Malloy: "He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck." This sort of linguistic dexterity, employed on people and on Los Angeles itself, is the main attraction for me, even more so than watching the Marlowe peel back the layers of mystery: Chandler often works like this, via understatement, decoy, and paradox, which gives each page several jolts of brilliance. Not more than 6' 5", and not wider than a beer truck. The nots ice the deal here. Soon after this, he meets Mrs. Florian, who is "as cute as a washtub." He never seems to run out of this material, and you can practically hear Humphrey Bogart snapping off such lines.
The other incident involves the theft of a jade necklace from Lewin Grayle, the young wife of an elderly investment banker, and the subject of a favorite Chandlerism: "It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." We follow Marlowe as he traces the ownership of a particular house, explores the firing of an honest police captain in the corrupt town of nearby bay City years ago, and extracts a clue from the paper mouthpiece of a "juju," what we would know as a joint or a reefer, among other feats of sleuthwork. Los Angeles of the 1940s comes alive on almost every page. Plus, Marlowe, who is a reader, a chess player, and a music aficionado, though the reader only picks this up in the beats and margins of Chandler's wonderful prose, delivers a harsh opinion on Hemingway that I wonder if his creator shared:
Detective Galbraith: "Who is this Hemingway person at all?"
Marlowe: "A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good."
If you want the crux of the mystery, read this spoiler.
Spoiler
Velma and Lewin are the same person; the torch singer changed her name and ditched her past in order to marry a wealthy man. Malloy, when he finally catches up to her, becomes a dangerous inconvenience and she kills him, putting the fatale in femme fatale.If you skip the spoiler, or even if you don't, the book is that rarity: a mystery you can read more than once; the language is that crisp and terrific.
Oh, and if you do read it, keep an eye peeled for the pink-headed bug. It's both objective correlative and symbol in one tiny, relentless package.