A review by megapolisomancy
Pick-Up on Noon Street by Raymond Chandler

2.0

Los Angeles, 1930s. Everything and everyone's dirty, one way or another, and a private dick just trying to look out for himself gets dragged into some hijinks involving a dame, double-crossing, getting pistol whipped, standoffs that end with one villain shooting another, constant smoking and drinking, dive hotels, fancy nightclubs, etc. You know the drill, and these four stories feel like pastiche even though they're coming straight from the source. It's all as casually racist and sexist as you'd expect a mainstream white author of the 1930s to be, characterization is nonexistent, the plots nonsensical (most particularly when it comes to the lengths the villains go to inexplicably avoid killing the protagonist), but mood is here in spades.

I should've just stuck with Tracer Bullet.