Steve: Ha, I think I was getting some kind of award and spouting complete nonsense, like in one of my Goodreads reviews where I have nothing to say but say it anyway. Marlowe meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help. When you open up any dictionary and you look up the phrase Hardboiled private eye, you'll find it defined right there in black and white as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. There's no sentiment and it's a dark, mesmerising, consuming journey through pure film noir, on paper.

Lewin ( Helen) Grayle but money doesn't smell, ( not always) things go dark and when Philip awakes at night in the lonely canyon, his client is no more. A handsome private dick (ahem), a heist of some rare jade jewels, mysterious beauties, lots of alcohol, clever wisecracks, and great writing.I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. In a routine cheap case , (when he can collect his fee) of trying to find a runaway, a Greek husband, Marlowe on Central Avenue in Los Angeles 1940 gazes at the titanic and dangerous Moose Malloy, on an incessant mission, this former jailbird is six and a half feet tall, 260 lbs. It’s often a wonder Marlowe gets anything done when half the time he’s soaking himself in bourbon while seemingly trying to burn bridges with his smarmy attitude and general distaste for anyone he meets. 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 this "ingeniously plotted" story, "Chandler explored his detective's fallibility and vulnerability" (ODNB).

He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

Whereas Spade’s every move seems coordinated and cross-referenced like a well-rehearsed play, Marlowe is all reaction, counterpunch and intuitive hunches.

The big man turned him in the air and slid his gaudy shoes apart on the scaly linoleum that covered the floor. He manages to get hold of a photo that's signed "Always yours, Velma Valento" and takes it with him. He’s also, seen more clearly by today’s standards, not admirable; he’s homophobic, at times seemingly racist, certainly arrogant with some women if not misogynist, with addictions to booze and cigarettes. They make a date to meet again at the club of a local hoodlum, Laird Brunette, near the spot where Marriott was killed. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

These streets range from the seedy joints lining Central Avenue to the estates in Beverly Hills and Brentwood Heights. It's just the way he is, in a place where money and fame, at all costs, are the only gods, and glamour and intrigue prevail. Marlowe visits Mrs Grayle, who finds him attractive and hires him, which he can use as an excuse to continue investigating the two murders.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The second in the Philip Marlowe series in which he gets caught up in a murder connected to a ring of jewel thieves. which brings me to ‘farewell my lovely’ — a book which doesn’t have that unifying thematic quality, but what it makes up with in spades is chandler’s new found confidence in his writing ability after his debut.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. 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. Mrs Grayle convinced Marriott to set up Marlowe to be killed in the canyon, but actually did so to kill Marriott because she viewed him as a 'weak link' who would reveal her secret past. More tough-talking noir from the world-weary Marlowe as he untangles another convoluted case involving jewel heists, blackmail, corruption, a beautiful woman on the make and a feisty girl-next-door. It is always good to follow these stories of the hard drinking detective and this is a fairly good story.