April 2012 Guest Editor Paul Torday on The Long Good-bye...
There are other contenders for the invention of the wisecracking, tough but romantic private eye, but if Raymond Chandler wasn’t the first, I think he was the best. In this novel Philip Marlowe takes risks to defend a man who turns out to be not worth the trouble. And he falls for a woman who turns out to be definitely worth the trouble. Almost every line of this book is a joy, and Chandler is a lot more than a thriller writer. His style is laconic, yet at times his descriptions of people and places are almost lyrical.
Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?
Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.
