Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by st_urmer
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
4.0
“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.”
This is the apex of the hard-boiled detective genre. The language crackles and Chandler effortlessly juggles seemingly disparate mysteries to a satisfying end. I felt that the book was marred by the casual racism it contains, both in language and in the way non-white characters were drawn. It goes a bit beyond a "well that was how it was at the time" rational to me. Still, this book is not just style over substance as detective novels often are. It is written by a master wordsmith and reveals a surprising depth of insight.
This is the apex of the hard-boiled detective genre. The language crackles and Chandler effortlessly juggles seemingly disparate mysteries to a satisfying end. I felt that the book was marred by the casual racism it contains, both in language and in the way non-white characters were drawn. It goes a bit beyond a "well that was how it was at the time" rational to me. Still, this book is not just style over substance as detective novels often are. It is written by a master wordsmith and reveals a surprising depth of insight.