Definitely my favorite Chandler, beating out The Big Sleep by a star and more than a dozen memorable lines. This book is absolutely soaking in quotables and may have the best prose of any noir I’ve ever read. Add in a classic main character and a solid plot and you have a nice shiny bundle of win. PHILIP MARLOWE: Chandler’s iconic PI is an arrogant alcoholic who fails every PC test you can formulate. He’s racist (from what I recall he insults African-Americans, Japanese and Native Americans and maybe others), homophobic and sexist enough that I would blackjack him on the braincase before he ever got within 10 yards of either of my daughters. He’s also mesmerizing and fills up the page with his presence. His entertainment value is off the charts and he cracks wiser than anyone this side of Sam Spade. But whereas Hammett’s Spade is all slick, smoky quips and cat-like grace, Marlowe is the “other side of the tracks” version. He’s unkempt, rugged and surly and his words are crusty with barbs. Whereas Spade’s every move seems coordinated and cross-referenced like a well-rehearsed play, Marlowe is all reaction, counterpunch and intuitive hunches. However, like Spade, he’s also smart (much more than he usually lets on) and has a knack for clear thinking and being able to read people. Best of all though, the man is incapable of cutting slack or giving inches and is saltier than the Pacific Ocean. THE PLOT: A convoluted series of mini-mysteries all stemming from Marlowe’s search for the ex-girlfriend of a just released from prison man-mountain named Moose Malloy. Fairly typical noir stuff but very well executed and paced to perfection by Chandler. THE WRITING: Finally…the prose. The real star of the show. I would say Chandler’s writing is a masterful example of noir. There may be others as good but it is hard for me to imagine any better. I would put Chandler’s prose into 3 separate and equally impressive categories that you don’t usually see from a single pen. First, you have a whole host of “I have to remember that” lines that are just fun to read. Quotes like: “The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.”“‘Who is the Hemingway person at all?’A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good.” “I didn’t say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you’re not thinking.” “It was a nice walk if you liked grunting.” “She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.” “I like smooth shiny girl, hardboiled and loaded with sin.” “A Harvard boy. Nice use of the subjunctive mood. The end of my foot itched, but my bank account was still trying to crawl under a duck.” Second, Chandler has a wonderful facility for painting descriptions so that you feel like you’re walking right beside Marlowe and he does it in such sparse, efficient style. 1644 West 54th Place was a dried-out brown house with a dried-out brown lawn in front of it. There was a large bare patch around a tough-looking palm tree. On the porch stood one lonely wooden rocker, and the afternoon breeze made the unprunned shoots of last year’s poinsettias tap-tap against the cracked stucco wall. A line of stiff yellowish half-washed clothes jittered on a rusty wire in the side yard.…I was looking into dimness at a blowsy woman who was blowing her nose as she opened the door. Her face was gray and puffy. She had weedy hair of that vague color which is neither brown nor blond, that hasn’t enough life in it to be ginger and isn’t clean enough to be gray. Her body was thick in a shapeless outing flannel bathrobe many moons past color and design. Those descriptions materialized in front of me more than pages of less polished prose could accomplish. It felt like I was there. Finally, there are the passages that aren’t just clever quips or snappy dialogue, but that convey a real sense of emotion. “She hung up, leaving me with a curious feeling of having talked to somebody that didn’t exist.” “…a sudden flashing movement that I sensed rather than saw. A pool of darkness opened at my feet and was far, far deeper than the blackest night. I dived into it. It had no bottom.” “There was just enough for to make everything seem unreal. The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.” That is the trifecta of writing. Brilliant, sharp and fun….descriptive, informative and polished…and evocative, moving and powerful. Yes, 5.0 stars and a definite must read for fans of noir, mysteries or just superb prose.HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!
I have read two books in the Marlowe series so far and I love them both. But this book had a personally touch to it. I felt intrigued, captivated and amused by this unconventional character that by the time I finished Farewell My Lovely, I could only see Marlowe as a real person come to life, rather than a fictional character. This case was a serious and dangerous one for Marlowe, HE was the one being targeted. It started when an escaped convict, looking for his girlfriend dragged Marlowe into a coloured establishment. Who then shot two employees out of confusion, and fled the scene. Marlowe was reluctant to get involved in the search for the convict – he was broke and was in need of a paid job - but a lazy and incompetent Investigating Officer pressured Marlowe to do a little snooping. Which led Marlowe into a sequence of seemingly unconnected events involving corrupted police and politicians, a jewelry heist, crime bosses and drug lords. But Marlowe interference was upsetting an unknown person or a gang, and they wanted him out of the way. He was drugged, severely beaten and choked. The torture he endured here had a lasting effect Marlowe, ruined and disturbed him in a big way. I tried to yell, for no reason at all. Breath panted in my throat and couldn’t get out. The Indian threw me sideways and got a body scissors on me as I fell. He had me in a barrel. His hands went to my neck. Sometimes I wake up in the night. I feel them there and I smell the smell of him. I feel the breath fighting and losing and the greasy fingers digging in. Then I get up and take a drink and turn the radio on.Chandler seriously out done himself; the writing was phenomenal, and while I loved what I’ve read to date, I can finally say I have witness a true literary genius in the great man. Farewell My Lovely is overflowing with exquisite razor sharp dialogue and phrases - I wanted to frame them up on my wall. Yet there were moments in his dialogue where Marlowe revealed more of himself where he openly expresses out loud or through his train of thought, his vulnerability, his fears and distressed And it felt like the characteristics that we know so well in Marlowe - the sarcasm and hard edge attitude and the excessive drinking problem that was so prominent in this book - was just a way to cover up or to numb those feelings away. Farewell My Lovely is clever plotted crime, not as complex as The Big Sleep, but equally as intriguing and tense, vivid imaginary of seedy LA in the 1940 and superb literature that is a class of its own. Now I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes:They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o’-shanter which wasn’t any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew.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. It said drawlingly, after I had answered:“You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective?”
What do You think about Farewell, My Lovely (1992)?
It's impossible to think of anything that might be remotely fresh and interesting to say about this book. It's a classic of crime fiction; it was first published in 1940, and it's been reviewed thousands of times, mostly by people far more competent than I.Suffice it to say that this is the second full-length novel featuring Los Angeles detective Philip Marlowe, following The Big Sleep, which had been published in 1939. Marlowe was the prototype for all the tough, wise-cracking P.I.s that would follow, and Chandler was really the first crime fiction writer to fully exploit the setting of Los Angeles. Scores of writers have followed in his footsteps, but very few have succeeded as well as Chandler did.As the book opens, Marlowe is searching for a missing husband when he encounters a mountain of a man named Moose Malloy who is staring up at a bar above the barber shop where Marlowe had hoped to find the aforementioned missing husband. Malloy, fresh out of prison after an eight-year stretch, is looking for his lost love, Velma. Malloy hasn't heard from Velma in all of that time, but that has not quenched his affections for the woman who used to work in the bar.Eight years is a long time, and in the interim, the bar, which used to be a white establishment, has now become an African-American one, although in 1940, no one would have described the place quite that politely. Well, one thing leads to another and Malloy drags Marlowe up the stairs and begins demanding answers from the people in the bar who, not surprisingly, have never heard of Velma.Malloy winds up killing someone in the bar and takes off, leaving Marlowe to explain things to the cops. From that point on, Marlowe is entangled in Malloy's search. As a sideline, he also takes a job body guarding a guy who is trying to exchange cash for a valuable jade necklace that was stolen from a friend.Neither job is simple and neither turns out very well, and before long, Marlowe is up to his neck in trouble with the cops and a whole lot of other people as well. Before it's all over, he'll be beat up, doped up, pushed around, and lied to, but it's all in the nature of the job.The plot really doesn't make a lot of sense, but nobody reads Chandler for the plot. The book is beautifully written with one great line following another. Through Marlowe, Chandler rolls back the curtain and exposes the seamy side of pre-war L.A. It's not a pretty sight, and you sometimes get the impression that Marlowe might be the only honest, decent man in the state.The Big Sleep may be one of the greatest crime novels ever written, and it's an impossible act to follow, even for Raymond Chandler. I like this book a lot, but I don't think it's quite on a par with the first book in the series. A solid 4.5 stars for me.
—James Thane
The second Philip Marlowe book - classic pulp fiction / pulp noir / hardboiled genre. This is great, I enjoyed it as much as the first, and it just oozes quotes.The short sentences, the short chapters, the narration style, it all just works.Look elsewhere for plotlines better explained than I could!"Cute little redhead" she said slowly and thickly. "Yeah, I remember her. Song and dance. Nice legs and generous with 'em."-It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.-She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.-I didn’t say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you’re not thinking. -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. I put them on and went out of the room.-I used my knee on his face. It hurt my knee. He didn't tell me whether it hurt his face.-The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.-"It's a swell theory," I said. "Marriott socked me, took the money, then he got sorry and beat his brains out, after first burying the money under a bush.”
—Daren
I've been searching my whole life for a private detective whose ". . . method of approach is soothin' to a man's dignity" and I believe I may have found him. Although we aren't madly in love yet, our relationship is off to a pretty swell start. I had a hard time with finishing this book. There was too much going on & too many weird anachronisms - for example, you say, "You're a nice lad. Dartmouth or Dannemora?" and suddenly tough guys become your friends - what is that about? I took a break at page 236 and read a whole other book, so in coming back to this, I had forgotten important stuff like why Marlowe was going to meet Brunette. However, the end was tied up beautifully in a tidy package and really, the writing is exquisite, so I will be visiting my buddy Marlowe again & soon.
—Melissa
