The Big Sleep / Farewell, My Lovely / The Long Goodbye

Almost as pleasurable as reading the Oryx and Crake trilogy (Atwood) back to back was the sense derived from this collection of Chandler's three best-known novels, each circa 200 pages long. It is hard not to like Philip Marlowe, the detective who sits at the center of all three. He is single-mindedly resolute and unapologetic in his decisions and lifestyle choices, a lone wolf and a born survivor. He is charmingly offensive but also very funny. In many ways he fits perfectly into post-depression/Prohibition-era Los Angeles. It is a hard city full of vice, a Hobbesian/Darwinian world, where ethics takes second place to pragmatism in most instances. The reader's engagement with Marlowe and his milieu is helped considerably by Chandler's prose style: hard-boiled and clipped, with a good balance of dialogue and Marlowe's interior monologue, a fast pace and lots of cliffhangers. In none of the three novels did I see the reveal coming, and the spider's web creation of layers of deception resembles Conan Doyle. Of the three, Farewell, My Lovely was my favorite in terms of plot balance and plausibility. The Big Sleep is the arguable classic and helps build a picture of Marlowe, while I felt The Long Goodbye gave the impression of a slightly jaded Marlowe/Chandler, at least relative to the other two works. Overall, great. 10 out of 10.

By Raymond Chandler