Farewell, My Lovely: A Novel (Philip Marlowe series Book 2) Kindle Edition

Although it is difficult to not hear Bogart's voice in Marlowe's, and that is not a bad thing, it is Raymond Chandler's voice that makes this book a treasure. Having read Chandler's and Hammett's books decades ago, I recently decided to revisit them in order. Much like Truman Capote's, Breakfast at Tiffany's, the book, Farewell My Lovely, is at times, fairly unrecognizable from the any of its celluloid counterparts. Also, not a bad thing, and this case a very good thing. The behind the scenes subplots and character studies are meaty and delicious. Rather than try and guessthe outcome, I prefer to enjoy the ride, and like Hammett, Chandler never lets you down.

"Farewell My Lovely" is a 1940 American Noir Crime Novel authored by Raymond Chandler. This protagonist is Philip Marlowe, a hard bitten private detective. The mystery itself is clever. Some of the writing, particularly about scenery and metaphor is masterful. To that extent the work is probably a five star crime novel.My concern and dilemma in writing this review is the really insensitive and dated vernacular and nomenclature about minorities and women. I have never worked in the publishing industry. My guess is this work would not be published as an original work by any mainstream American publisher today. I do not wish to offend the sensitivities of any reader.I do not believe in censorship. I want to read literature as written. If there is insensitivity, I use that as a means of reflection, learning and self improvement.At a strictly practical level, I have had readers tell me that they do not care about writing about scenery. I respect that, but Raymond Chandler is a master in depicting scenery. If one doe not care about scenery and metaphor, one may not enjoy this work as I do.In summary, I really like this story. I really like American Crime Noir. I love expert depiction of scenery. I love artful metaphor. In that context, I really like this work. On the other had, there is a lot of "cringe factor" contained within this work. As a parent I would not allow my youthful children to read this without very serious parental guidance. Thank You...

While finishing up on another case, Marlowe spots a big white guy go into a bar and gambling club for blacks. He's looking for a girl. As Marlowe tries to get away from the case, his next client hires him for a job that goes wrong. There's a connection between Moose, a stolen necklace, a nut house and a fortune teller. This one has it all. A maniac thug, drugs, guns, corruption and femme fetales including a wealthy blonde.Raymond Chandler brings L.A to life in this thriller about people looking for something, or trying to get rid of it. We're introduced to the character of Anne Riordan, a recurring character in Marlowe's mythos especially in the HBO tv series from the 80s.Marlowe is a white knight who is constantly getting his butt whooped through the streets of L.A by crooks, cons and cops and for what? Pocket change if he's lucky.

When you open up any dictionary and you look up the phrase Hardboiled private eye, you'll find it defined right there in black and white as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. If much of the book seems familiar, it may be that you read it many years ago or that so many of the motifs were borrowed and used by so many other private eye writers over the years. But if you want to know how it's really done, you return to the master Hardboiled craftsman himself.I always picture Philip Marlowe as Humphrey Bogart and no one can ever shake that image from me. However, Bogart only played Marlowe in the film adaptation of the first book in the series, The Big Sleep. For Farewell, My Lovely, you get the film images of Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum.But, you always get the mean streets of Los Angeles no matter how you picture Marlowe. These streets range from the seedy joints lining Central Avenue to the estates in Beverly Hills and Brentwood Heights. The streets lead of course to Chandler's fictional Bay City, loosely based on what was a crooked Santa Monica right down to the gambling boats three legal miles offshore.Marlowe here is always quick with a quip but world-weary. He's seen it all a time or two and nothing necessarily surprises him except maybe getting knocked out when he's playing bodyguard or locked up and drug-addled in a sanitarium.The very beginning of the novel sets the whole attitude as Marlowe nonchalantly accepts a great big ape of a guy, Moose Malloy, no less, throwing a guy bodily out if his way. Moose is a great character, a singleminded maniac returned to the street after eight years in the pen and determined to find his gal, Vera. Gil Brewer later created a whole novel about such a guy in The Angry Dream.All the usual Hardboiled rackets are well-represented here from blackmail to fortune telling to crooked cops to payoffs to rich folks living in a different world. Through it all, Marlowe resolutely starts adding up all these things that just don't add up and couldn't possibly be related. But what makes it such a joy to read is the fantastic prose, the descriptions of people and places that just bring them to life, often with a sardonic humor.

I love the style of Chandlers writing and the one liners, although written a while back, has dated in some respects , but the humour still carries. A great quote about Hemingway in the novel , about always repeating himself so much that you tend to believe eventually!!The story in this novel I feel not one of his best, but still worth the read.

Farewell My Lovely is perhaps my favourite of all Raymond Chandler's books, although he was not a prolific author and there aren't too many to choose from. I guess he was a perfectionist. Like all his novels, it has a memorable beginning, this time with Philip Marlowe spotting a man outside a bar wearing a sports coat with golfballs on it for buttons and alligator shoes with 'white explosions on the toes'. His curiosity leads him to several bruising encounters with local gangsters.What I like most about Farewell is the evocation of Bay City, a respectable Californian seaside community which hides a grimy heart. I love his descriptions of the town: 'Beyond the electroliers, beyond the beat and toot of the small sidewalk cars, beyond the smell of hot fat and popcorn and the small children and the barkers in the peep shows, beyond everything but the smell of the ocean... I walked almost alone now'. The only person writing anything at all like this at the time was Graham Green in Brighton Rock.The characters are all memorable from six-foot Moose Malloy ('not wider than a beer truck'), to corrupt police sergeants to a would-be female detective. The dialogue is snappy and the pace is always full-on. Whilst many other writers of the time (such as Agatha Christie) seem like quaint period pieces, Chandler is still as fresh and modern as the day he was first published.On the downside, the slang and volcabulary confuse me. People drink gimlets and big houses have portes-coucheres. But it hardly seems to matter. You just get swept along by the prose.Thanks, then, to Penguin for reprinting Chandler's entire output in these handsome new covers with short and sweet introductions from contemporary crime hacks. I think the author would have loved them.

I don't read a lot of thrillers and this is the first Chandler I've read. As many have said before, this is a step and a half above your average good thriller, the reason being the wit and intelligence of the prose, the elegance of the descriptions and the understanding of character which is compassionate, passionate and cynical all at the same time.His flip one-liners aren't just clever, but oil the wheels of the plot. Some of the references I couldn't understand, they belong to the period or the locality, but the plot moves along because the characters find common ground by means of their expressions in the shifting sands of what is acceptable and what is not in the way of behaviour.Another thing is that reading this is a bit like watching a film, Los Angeles comes to life before your eyes.On the downside there's a slight sense of not looking very far beneath the surface, it would slow the book down.

Doesn't live up to the hype! Atmospheric but Chandler tries too hard to keep up.the noir atmosphere. Too much description too little action. The story also meanders quite a bit - without coming together well.

Excellent hard-boiled thriller where nobody can be trusted. The prose is razor sharp and the plot is exciting with plenty of twists and turns. This is easily as good as The Big Sleep and I would certainly carry on reading this series. There is no spare detail, everything counts and modern thriller writers could certainly learn a thing or two from him.