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anjana 's review for:
Farewell, My Lovely
by Raymond Chandler
Philip Marlowe is a Private Investigator, he has his own dark shadows, but he tries to do a good job. He is conscientious in his own way and has his own moral codes. He is grey enough to take kisses offered to him but stops things going too far (again, not exactly a likeable man but not a despicable one)
People are not held up to any high standards of morality, the cynicism of the author seems to bleed into the pages. (This is where the intro helped me make sense of why that might be so).
The second case that we meet Philip Marlowe in is when he is looking for a missing person. He finds himself in a mixed neighbourhood (which leads to a pretty good look at how things must have been for ‘coloured’ business owners at the time). While he wanders, he meets a BIG man. This man is looking for someone he knew from before he went to prison. He is also deaf to reason and ends up leaving a lot of chaos in his wake.
Marlowe is but a witness, although the events get him involved in a very convoluted plot. A lot of individual circumstances all tie back to the start point without being too convenient. There is also obviously a dangerous, beautiful woman involved (actually, two).
Fast drinking, driving and killing soon make its way into the tale and are strewn across the narrative. When the train of thought is described at the end, it is hard to disagree with the way things turned out. I had trouble getting into it when I first started it because of how the story was being presented. I almost gave up after a chapter or so, but slowly with time, I got the hang of the storytelling style and liked the end result!