Good grief. What a difference 18 months or so makes. I read The Big Sleep and i enjoyed it up to a point but found it a souffle overly egged on the 'witty and offbeat images' ingredient but this one, Playback, I absolutely loved. There is still the wit, the clever descriptions, the tension and mystery but it simply flowed for me more and perhaps i found Marlowe more attractive as a character. He seemed more human and if Chandler sometime strayed into dangerous territory in the prose stakes he inserted his tongue so firmly in his cheek that no-one, not even I, could miss the fun he was having at his own expense.Then she leaned back and gave me the look. 'I've got friends who could cut you down so small you'd need a step-ladder to put your shoes on.''Somebody did a lot of hard work on that one,'I said. 'But hard work's no substitute for talent.'The story is a contorted and confused one. Marlowe is given a job by an arrogant lawyer to follow a woman but he is not told why or for how long. His tailing of her involves his getting caught up in all sorts of shady and dislikeable characters. A corpse reported which then disappears, a suicide which remains unexplained, a woman who seems to change colours and manner with the wind and assorted larger than life hiss boo villains or incompetents make up a quick and enticing story. We see Marlowe encountering respect from unexpected quarters, advice and assistance from the habitually overlooked and we see him showing sympathy and a tenderness which is also unexpected.'Yeah' he sighed. 'You work twenty hours a day to buy a home together and by the time you have, fifteen other guys have been smooching your girl.''Not this one,' I said. 'She's just teasing you. She glows everytime she looks at you.'I went out and left them smiling at each other.That little excerpt summed up why I preferred this book to the previous one. In The Big Sleep I encountered a brash heavy, a slick talking cynic,; in this one I met a man who I actually genuinely found I was rooting for.I wolfed it down. I loved every page and the poignancy of the last chapter is really surprising. Hard-bitten private detective or not, in the last few chapters of the book Chandler lets us see this man's soul and his yearning. It is believable, he is decent and by the end I found myself punching the air in delight.Just to show the change; here is the other review.http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...With thanks to Steve who finally gave me the perfect idiot guide as to how to do this simple action !!
5* for now, to remind me to try more. California 1950s had hats, spats, gloves, garters, hankies; some things, like PBX, phone switchboard intercom, no longer exist. The dated setting and phrasing are major to the charm of Chandler. I like humorous expressions. "The next hour was three hours long." Hard-boiled shamus Philip Marlowe is hired by unknown bigwigs back East to tail classy Eleanor King from the Super Chief train. He overhears sleazy Larry Mitchell blackmail the dusky-red-wavy-haired beauty as Betty Mayfield, but no explanation why. Besides Marlowe, Betty attracts new suitor, handsome rich Clark Brandon, polite owner of hotel, restaurant, much of the small resort town. Guns, disappearance, and murder deepen the mystery of Chandler's last case. Apparently from earlier in the series, hotstuff Marlowe misses rich Linda Loring in Paris, but he still makes time with any handy dame. Pudgy Goble from Kansas trails them, threatens, but doesn't explain either. Out-of-towner solves Betty's identity, but Marlowe has to guess where other troubles came from. Chandler seems to think Marlowe is a hero if he refuses money from everyone. Spoilers:Marlowe saves Goble mid-beating from hired gun red-head Richard Harvest (why happen in Marlowe's motel cottage?). Mitchell's car found abandoned, unreliable witness to his departure hanged. Finally Betty's father-in-law Henry Kinsolving shows up from North Carolina, claiming she murdered his son. Honest local police Captain Alessandro runs him off. Since Goble and Brandon are both from Kansas, Marlowe links them. Since Mitchell was a vile criminal, Marlowe just confronts Brandon for the truth, no arrest. Typos: p10 I didn't meant that (mean)p13 toying with coffee and a snail (Can you guess? fingernail, snack, ...?)
What do You think about Playback (1988)?
The last, and definitely the least, of Chandler's novels. Some of those ice-pick similes and that spiky wit is still on display, but the plot unravels a little too easily at the end and Marlowe is a bit of a sexual goon this time around. His musings on women get pretty sexist and the dialogue put in the mouths of female characters in the many sex scenes (considerably less explicit than what you'd find in, say, James Hadley Chase, thankfully) is frankly egregious. This one is more for the completist than the novice.
—Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Chandler's last novel has defects in plotting, but not in writing. Philip Marlowe, the most influential of the early fictional private eyes, is hired to tail a good-looking redhead who seems to be on the lam. He isn't told much about the job by his stuffy employer, a lawyer named Clyde Umney (with a wonderful flashy secretary named Miss Vermilyea), but then Umney doesn't know much either. It soon becomes evident that the young woman is complicated and that she is being followed, and shaken down, by a another man. And the shakedown artist isn't the only follower. There's a fairly rough piece of work in the form of a private eye from Kansas City. And then there's a local big roller named Clark Brandon, who hails from somewhat murky and possibly criminal beginnings in KC.Marlowe dutifully and skillfully follows along, though it is possible that he may be a decoy, and meant to distract the young woman from her other tails. What is it about her past that leaves her open to blackmail? Why has she ended up in Esmeralda, a smug upscale California resort town? Why did she lay Marlowe out with a whiskey bottle while he was tussling with her blackmailer? And why does she offer Marlowe a sizeable chunk of money to get rid of a body? Things set up well, and they end well enough. What's disappointing is the path from the set-up to the ending. It gets both murky and obvious at the same time. Even so, Marlowe is always good, cyncical company, and the quality of the writing is top notch. (As an example, get this bit of dialogue:"Someone who loved me very much had put them a bag of ice cubes on the back of my head. Somebody who loved me less had bashed in the back of my skull. It could have been the same person. People have moods. (33)"
—Larry
I've read three Chandlers so far (also The Lady In The Lake and The Big Sleep) and I have to say this was my favourite. The plot, as such, is a little ramshackle and the *big secret* the main dame carries might not be something to shout about, but the prose seems darker than ever and there are slices of almost existential brilliance which left me breathless. If anything, this was more real, more hit-and-miss which real life is all about. The only puzzle is that my edition has a cover shot of a parrot which appears briefly and inconsequently in the novel!A short, fast read that crackles relentlessly. Highly recommended.
—Andrew
