The "romance scene" with Charlotte Rampling (29) and Robert Mitchum (a worn-out 57) was cringe-worthy. It's impossible to think of anything that might be remotely fresh and interesting to say about this book. Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard. Audience Question: I may be taking you further afield, but is this visual, visceral style brought on by Chandler one that necessarily de-emphasizes plot?

I have at least 3k physical books on my TBR pile in my office that has really turned into a book storage space. The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". In una Los Angeles anni ’40 l’investigatore privato Philip Marlowe si trova casualmente presente sulla scena del crimine.

We have two candidates for the femme-fatale here, and you are kept wondering to the last page if there are one or two bad girls.

She tells Marlowe that she learned from Randall that the stolen necklace belongs to a Mrs Lewin Lockridge Grayle, the young wife of a wealthy and influential Bay City resident. Lindsay Marriott, maybe a loathsome gigolo, he dresses well though and has good manners, involved with the wife of a multi -millionaire among others, the beautiful Mrs. If you can get past the casual racism that litters the early chapters, you’ll find one of the classics of noir fiction.He put his lifted foot down slowly and turned slowly and stared at us, spreading his feet gently and moving a broad tongue along his lips. Chandler worked on the book from June to December 1939, before destroying the entire typescript and starting again. I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good.

But in this novel, I noticed that Marlowe tunes in to things that a typical hard head wouldn’t: he muses on how a building’s lobby is decorated, and he assesses the foliage growing out front. Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is one hell of an interesting character leaving me sad to know there are only six books in the series.But what makes it such a joy to read is the fantastic prose, the descriptions of people and places that just bring them to life, often with a sardonic humor. The Long Goodbye was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". If possible the plot/story-line of Farewell, My Lovely is even more convoluted than its predecessor, The Big Sleep. Definitely my favorite Chandler, beating out The Big Sleep by a star and more than a dozen memorable lines. The tale is fun and familiar, partly because Chandler paved the road for the best of what we know of Noir, but moreover, it's just GOOD.