Halloween Bingo 2025
They say the rich can always protect themselves and that in their world it is always summer. I've lived with them and they are bored and lonely people.
Raymond Chandler wrote beautifully about brutal events. Philip Marlowe is taciturn, but when he does speak, his dialogue is spot on. In this sixth Marlowe novel, our private investigator gets into trouble by being a good Samaritan—he helps a polite drunk who gets tipped out of his car on his ass and abandoned by his date. Marlowe takes him home, cleans him up, pours coffee into him, feeds him, and drives him home. A half-assed friendship develops, mostly consisting of going for drinks together. But no good deed goes unpunished and Terry Lennox shows up at Marlowe's one morning with a more substantial request, to be driven to Tijuana to catch a plane.
Who knew that one kindness would involve Marlowe in a convoluted web of crimes. He is just stubborn enough to want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He's like Peter Falk's portrayal of Columbo--"Just one more thing…” The people involved are well off and Chandler goes to great lengths to convince us that money certainly does not guarantee happiness. Marlowe may be a bit lonely, but he is more content than these fancy folk. They sure do like to try to dissuade Marlowe from his inquiries though.
The novel lives up to its title. It's very long and there were points where I wished Chandler would get on with things and say goodbye already. But one doesn't read Chandler for plot. One reads him for atmosphere, for dialogue, and for elegant turns of phrase. However the author attributes this talent to the French.
The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right.
To say goodbye is to die a little.
I read this book for the Noir square of my Halloween Bingo card.
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