Slightly spoiled by having fallen for Elliot Gould in Leigh Brackett's adaptation, The Long Goodbye is still an overwhelmingly impressive piece of dark literature. When people talk about Chandler's influence on crime fiction it's always in reference to his hardboiled dialogue, his similes and metaphors but in reading this final entry in the Marlowe series you can draw a long powerful line from Chandler through Crumley, Sallis and Block, to name only three, writers who have taken the mantle of writing about society through the eyes of a worn out private detective, it's harsh and bleak and powerfully written and still its packed with wicked dialogue and smart-aleck observations.

DNF Unable to get into this book