"She's a nice girl. Not my type."

"You don't like them nice?" He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand.

"I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin."

Hey, copper, it's how I talk, see? Mahhhhhh

This was exactly what the doctor ordered after a blitz of wonderful yet terribly earnest books, one after the other. This classic noir was everything I needed. A handsome private dick (ahem), a heist of some rare jade jewels, mysterious beauties, lots of alcohol, clever wisecracks, and great writing.

2024: I think this old review (slightly modified) still holds for me.

2011: It took me a long time to like this book. The writing here was often gorgeous... and pointless... and so very modern. But it wasn't till ch. 25 that I started really to dig the writing, and even then I couldn't see why I was reading it -- till... it all fell together at the end... and made it all smooth and satisfying and worthwhile.

The great thing about Chandler is that as soon as you start to see something or start to anticipate it right, he already knows that you've just seen it -- and doesn't play you for a sap -- he's always one step ahead -- just where he should be.

A victory of style if ever there was one. Immersed in the beauty of his prose, the way in which he presents his world, the timing of his humour, one scarcely notices the storyline, and I use that word advisedly.

As it happened, style's been uppermost in my mind lately while editing a friend's autobiographical ms. In her attempt to find her style she has resorted to a heavy-handed use of The Rhetorical Comma. Eventually they began to enrage me. I pictured lining them up in front of a firing squad and obliterating them with bullets. I began viciously stabbing at them. Her ms. is now covered in angry crosses and one word spat out over and over, as if out of a Dalek. Omit. Omit. Omit.

Rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...

★★★☆☆ 3 stars

"Però, nonostante tutto, ce n'è tanta di gente simpatica al mondo. Uno può arrabbiarsi a leggere i giornali, sentirsi nauseato e stanco, schifare gli uomini politici, va bene; ma persone simpatiche al mondo ce ne sono sempre state."

First of all I'm so partial to R.Chandler's books that I'd easily give only the titles three stars,and this gem is definitely a five-star title.
Apart from this sentimental love-and-hate story,I’m ALWAYS impressed by the characters speaking like they carry a book of wit and humor,to the point that I’ll start picking up sharp-edged setences from here and add them to my daily conversation.
The plot is a bit comlicated with rugged and overused narrative and minor parts,but the main irresistible characters beautifully cancel them out.
Of his novels,I'd say this is one of the best character-driven ones.
It was published in 1940,and the content is somewhat old fashioned,but every time I open this book,I can meet timeless Philip Marlowe,a man of principle.Just for this reason,I'll be reading it forever.

A very nice read. Recommended.

Philip Marlowe is looking for a woman's missing husband when he encounters Moose Malloy, a brute fresh out of prison, looking for his lost love Velma. Moose kills a man and Marlowe gets corralled into looking for the missing Velma. In the mean time, Marlowe gets another gig as a bodyguard and soon winds up with a corpse for a client. Will Marlowe find Velma and get to the bottom of things?

As I've said before, noir fiction and I go together like chronic constipation and heroin addiction. Farewell, My Lovely, Philip Marlowe's sophmore adventure, is one of the better noir tales I've ever read.

I wasn't completely sold on Farewell, My Lovely at first. It seemed like it took a little longer to get started than the Big Sleep. Once Marlowe got warmed up and I forgave it for not being The Big Sleep, I was completely absorbed by the writing. Chandler's poetic prose only got better in the gap between the Big Sleep and this book. There were even more quotable lines in this one. Chandler's similes reminded me of P.G. Wodehouse's at times, maybe the kind old Plum would write if he was in the grips of a powerful hangover.

"I lit a cigarette. It tasted like a plumber's handkerchief."

As for the plot, it's only slightly less convoluted than the Big Sleep. The two cases didn't intersect much until the end and I only guessed the big twist a paragraph or two before it happened. As with the previous book, the prose was the star of the show. Marlowe took so many blows to the head in this one that I had sympathy pains while reading it.

While I wouldn't say it's as good as The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely is a classic and not to be missed by noir fans. Four easy stars.

I started reading Raymond Chandler's novels to complete my thriller culture. I thought I would find the same cliché of the solitary and invincible detective laying down the law in the streets of Los Angeles. So yes, it's partly true, but the novel is not just a story of gangsters. The essential lies in Chandler's talent: the atmosphere, intrigue, and writing are remarkable.
The story begins with an unusual encounter. Marlowe meets a man who is distinguished by a build "no wider than a tank truck." The behemoth enters a bar frequented by African Americans, and in less than a minute, one of the customers had ejected from the establishment—an excellent glide. The detective, intrigued, enters the bar in turn. And here, he is drawn into a tortuous story that will take him to the living rooms of a millionaire, a medium or an alcoholic slut, a clandestine clinic, or the holds of a boat transformed into a casino.
I particularly liked Chandler's style. He knows how to be lyrical and uses images like that of a beetle stuck in a police building to illustrate Marlowe's state of mind. And then there are these images that I find lovely. Here are two examples: "The moist air was cold as the ashes of a dead love" and "the voice became as cold as a canteen meal." The novel is very well written and has an old-fashioned touch (busty blondes, crooked police officers, Italian mobsters), giving it a natural charm. A favorite!

I think there is version of this novel made into a Falcon movie. I haven't seen it. I've seen the Dick Powell, "Murder, My Sweet" (1944) version and the Robert Mitchum version from 1975 and like them both. Reading this now a 2nd time, 30 some years after first reading it, I'd forgotten how good it is. Sometimes you can see Chandler working the plot out as he goes along, but it's nothing that pulls you out of the novel. I can't remember the short story it's based on. It's probably a combination of two or more of his BLACK MASK stories.

This novel contains a favorite character of mine, Anne Riordan. Daughter of a cop, by turns cynical and smart. Anne is one of those women you'd like to have on your side when the odds are stacked against you. She takes a liking to Marlowe. Feeds him leads and connections he'd probably have missed on his own. She offers to even be his assistant free of charge. Unfortunately, Marlowe is too stubborn to take her up on it.

Her smile was cozy and acid at the same time. "I beg your pardon. I forgot for the moment you were a detective. It would have to be complicated, wouldn't it? I suppose there's sort of indecency about a simple case."

On the flip-side is Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle. Mrs. Grayle is one of those golden dreams behind the gates on a hill. A "grail" for readers who are into that kind of thing. A blonde "to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." Married to a feeble old rich guy, Mrs. Grayle toys with Marlowe, feeds him scotch and leaves lipstick on his face. You know she's no good. Just the kind of dame that gets under your skin.

"I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin."

And then the setting. The corruption of Bay City, the tarnished promise of Hollywood, the neon of L.A., the palm trees, the beating surf and the wind in the pines and the rich homes "hanging by their teeth and eyebrows" on the hills above the ocean.

What can I say? I absolutely loved the style and imagery. I mean, SERIOUSLY loved it. Marlowe is the quintessential hard-boiled detective who is suspicious of everyone, especially the dames, clients, cops, and thugs... but he has a pretty good understanding with the thugs.

The tale is fun and familiar, partly because Chandler paved the road for the best of what we know of Noir, but moreover, it's just GOOD. Snappy. Sarcastic. So VERY colorful.

And because -- let's be fair -- this came out in 1940, we need to adjust our sensibilities. Just a little. As a character, Marlowe is an alcoholic racist who lets his boredom rule his feet and his mouth.

I don't have to like his racism to think of him as the anti-hero that he is. He's an asshole in more ways than one. But he happens to hurt assholes, so that's viscerally okay. By today's standards, it's problematic, as are so many things that came out back then are, today, but the core and the style in this is totally brilliant. I'm often astounded by the turns of phrase. And so, for that, alone, I would totally recommend this.

Velmaaaaaaaaaaa, er – Marlooooooowwwwwe!

Raymond Chandler’s second Marlowe novel, Farewell, My Lovely is so damn good that all through the book I felt like Oliver, still asking for more – only that this comparison is rather lopsided because Chandler’s prose is anything but watered-down gruel ladled tight-fistedly into tiny wooden bowls. If I had to use Chandler’s style of creating offbeat-upbeat similes in order to convey an adequate idea of its quality I’d say it’s like enjoying a good dram and a pipeful of excellent tobacco with Lauren Bacall, directly out of To Have and Have Not, sitting in front of me and asking me if I knew how to whistle.

This simile is, admittedly, lacking the terseness of Chandler’s language, but it’s the best I can think of to express the laid-back excellence of the whole Marlowe thing. It’s simply grand.

But why?

It’s definitely not due to the story, which has a lot of red herrings and sloppy logic, making it all too clear that Chandler was not much into plot-construction. In Farewell, My Lovely, PI Marlowe runs into an ex-con named Moose Malloy, who is searching for his former sweetheart Velma and who ends up killing a man in the bar where she used to work as a singer. Marlowe’s attention, however, is soon taken off the quest for Velma and Malloy by a phone call from some man named Marriott, who wants his services as a bodyguard when ransoming an invaluable jade necklace that was stolen from a millionaire’s wife. Unfortunately, Marlowe is not too good a bodyguard, and Marriott ends up dead, which makes our hero feel obliged to find out more about the gang of jewel robbers he supposes to have used Marriott as a finger man. Soon Marlowe finds himself beaten up by crooked policemen, doped and put in a seedy kind of asylum, and these are just a few of the things happening to him. Small wonder that Chandler had a very hard time putting all these scenes and the people involved in them together to a really plausible plot-line. But who cares, anyway?

Not only is the plot of debatable plausibility, it is also based on the first person narrator’s withholding certain information from us, whereas he is willing to share other bits of knowledge on the respective crimes; the only blemish being that you always have the impression you know everything the PI knows, and so when in chapter 40 Marlowe suddenly divulges that he had known all along that x…y…z, this comes as a let-down, in a way, because you gain the impression that Chandler just wanted to tie up some loose ends he could never have come to terms with otherwise. But still – who cares??

Who would pay attention to such things as plot and narrative conventions when an author masters his style so well as Chandler does – I’m going to conclude this sermon with some of my favourite quotations from Farewell, My Lovley .

What I like best, however, is this mist of heroic pessimism that makes for most of the atmosphere in Marlowe’s mean streets. Here you more often than not stumble on policemen who are either completely jaded or crooked and beat you up with your own gun, but on the other hand, a godfather of crime will keep his word like any old gentleman. Good and evil hardly seem to stick to one side only, as even respectable old women will tell lies for the thrill of feeling important, and a brutal criminal like Malloy is motivated by genuine love. Amidst all this turmoil, one might ask Marlowe, as Anne Riordan does:

”’You’re so marvellous […] So brave, so determined, and you work for so little money. Everybody bats you over the head and chokes you and smacks your jaw and fills you with morphine, but you just keep right on hitting between tackle and end until they’re all worn out. What makes you so wonderful?’”

What makes him so wonderful then? As a fan of westerns, I would say that there are a lot of similarities between Marlowe and the typical western hero, even though the noir background seems to call for a more cynical and callous protagonist. For all his hard-boiledness, Marlowe is, in his heart of hearts, a man of principle following a code of honour, even if it is mainly professional. This is what gives him his determination, this and his chancing to meet, once in a while, one or two decent people in his wanderings through mean streets. All this makes him quite a melancholy hero, a hero who knows so much about the human condition that his adherence to his own principles makes him even more adorable.

But before we’re getting too lofty here, let’s have some of my favourite quotations from this rich novel:

”He had a battered face that looked as if it had been hit by everything but the bucket of a dragline. It was scarred, flattened, thickened, chequered, and welted. It was a face that had nothing to fear. Everything had been done to it that anybody could think of.”

“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.”

“The big foreign car drove itself, but I held the wheel for the sake of appearances.”

“Twenty minutes’ sleep. Just a nice doze. In that time I had muffed a mob and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. You can get a glass of water at a night club – maybe.”

“The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.”

[about a murderer] “I had seen some of his work and it was the kind of work that stays done.”

“He stared at me and his left hand began to edge towards the gun. He belonged to the Wandering Hand Society. The girls would have had a time with him.”

I love Goodreads it has really enhanced my reading experience. And at the same time added to my anxiety. There are too many great books to read. I have at least 3k physical books on my TBR pile in my office that has really turned into a book storage space. When another reader posts something about one of my favorite books, I stop and think about how much I loved that book. That’s what happened recently with Farewell My Lovely. I dropped what I was reading and read it again. I don’t have time to reread books not with with such a tall TBR pile that continually beckons…and yet I do because that’s what the reading experience is all about. Great reads.
I’ve read Farewell my Lovely a number of times and with each reading I catch something I’d missed. This book is timeless and one of the greats with the voice and turn-of-phrase that many have tried to duplicate and have failed. I highly recommend this book.
David Putnam author of The Bruno Johnson series.