Pun Salad

The blog's eye candy points to the Kindle edition, simply because I like the garish cover art. And it's a deal, a mere $3.00 as I type. I read the paperback I purchased back in the early 1970s, for a mere 95¢, and it also has a very cool cover, art by Tom Adams,. who—not that it matters—was also known for his Agatha Christie book covers.

The book's Wikipedia page claim that "some critics" don't like it as much as The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely; I'm with the "others" (and Chandler himself) who consider it his best novel.

Our hero/narrator, Marlowe, becomes unlikely friends with Terry Lennox when his (temporarily ex-) wife Sylvia kicks him out of her Rolls-Royce, disgusted at his inebriation. Marlowe drags him home, sobers him up slightly, and their relationship is born. A while later, he finds out that Terry and Sylvia have remarried. But by page 19 (in my edition) Terry's at Marlowe's door, asking/demanding to be driven to Tijuana. And that happens, but it soon develops that Sylvia has been brutally murdered. And that puts Marlowe in accessory-after-the-fact trouble with the LA law.

Amazingly, that seems to resolve itself relatively quickly, but not before Marlowe interacts with thuggish cops, a threatening gangster, a nosy reporter, and a shady lawyer working for an anonymous client. Pretty soon he's on to his next major case, tracking down a famous missing novelist who's a notorious drunk. And that seemingly has nothing to do with Terry Lennox… or does it?

Slight spoiler: of course it does.

As noted, I think Chandler's at his best here, with Marlowe's insightful cynicism about southern California. He also does some pretty crackerjack detective work here. (I think this is a marked contrast to The Big Sleep, where things, more or less, just happened, with him as observer.)

And there's a very surprising twist at the end. (Well, maybe you won't find it surprising. I still remember being surprised myself, around 50 years ago.)