Genre: Mystery, Noir
Series: Philip Marlowe #4
Page Count: 216
Publication Year: 1943
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Special Notes: I accidentally started this series halfway through.
Summary: Summer in the city becomes murder in the mountains.
You know what I love? Reading a book by an unfamiliar author and knowing within a short while that it will be a good book. Perhaps not perfect, but definitely a chunk above average.
This story starts with our detective protagonist, Philip Marlowe, being asked to find a guy’s wife. What starts as a possible affair leads to murder and it quickly ensnares other people, all with their own motives and nefarious plots.
I kept comparing the other mysteries I’ve consumed (mainly Poirot and other British stories) to this one. I thought this one might be a bit easier to solve since it doesn’t shine a spotlight on the little clues but rather the broader strokes of crime. And I think had I paid a bit more attention I might have come closer to the truth of the matter, but now that I have an idea on how this author operates, it could be easier for me to solve the other mysteries. But it’s not important for me to be able to solve the crimes in order to enjoy the journey.
I was trying to think of an actor who could play Marlowe and all I came up with was Humphrey Bogart (incidentally, he did play Marlowe in an adaptation). If you’re familiar with Bogart then you know what kind of man Marlowe is, although he has a bit more humor than Bogart. The story takes place over the course of a couple days and I don’t know much about Marlowe outside of his job; all I’ve seen are his practical, determined, even keeled and slightly cynical sides, which is totally fine. I feel if this book were written today, he’d have all this backstory and introspective paragraphs to make him more tragic or sensitive and I don’t need that. Not to mention that would take away from the murder. But because it’s not about Marlowe as a person (or not yet, anyway) I can’t say that he is a deep character. I do like him though.
“I’d like to be smooth and distant and subtle about all this too. I’d like to play this sort of game just once the way somebody like you would like it to be played. But nobody will let me—not the clients, nor the cops, nor the people I play against. However hard I try to be nice I always end up with my nose in the dirt and my thumb feeling for somebody’s eye.”
I doubt any of the other characters will return but they all seemed pretty fully realized and distinct. It’s interesting that the cops see Marlowe as a lesser man because he’s only a private detective, and yet he doesn’t have the highest opinion of the cops either. I hope there’s a reoccurring relative, cop friend or other PI so it’s not only ever Marlowe on the streets because I think he needs some firm connection to seem more real.
The description sometimes doesn’t make sense to me and it is definitely dated (what is a Capehart and PBX?). The people are assigned a list of facial features and clothing; it isn’t the greatest writing, nor is it a huge drawback. However, sometimes the description is spot on and kinda funny:
I gobbled what they called the regular dinner, drank a brandy to sit on its chest and hold it down, and went out on to the main street. It was still broad daylight but some of the neon signs had been turned on, and the evening reeled with the cheerful din of auto horns, children screaming, bowls rattling, skeeballs clinking, .22’s snapping merrily in shooting galleries, juke boxes playing like crazy, and behind all this out on the lake the hard barking roar of the speedboats going nowhere at all and acting as though they were racing with death.
He gave me another long empty stare and I gave it right back to him.
The Graysons were on the fifth floor in front, in the north wing. They were sitting together in a room which seemed to be deliberately twenty years out of date. It had fat overstuffed furniture and brass doorknobs, shaped like eggs, a huge wall mirror in a gilt frame, a marble-topped table in the window and dark red plush side drapes by the windows. It smelled of tobacco smoke and behind that the air was telling me they had had lamb chops and broccoli for dinner.
The feel of the world is natural and real. He’ll answer the door with his mouth full of toast. He’ll be sneaking around this house, hear a sound outside, hurriedly turn out the lights only to discover its just a deer on the deck. And when he calls the cops to a murder scene and one of the cops tosses a flower behind the fire screen, Marlowe says he better pick it up or it’ll be taken for a clue. There are all these little moments sprinkled throughout that show these people are not constricted by their roles and they can be normal, if that makes sense.
The setting is just so…1940’s America. Everybody’s a chain-smoking alcoholic with a pragmatic/grim outlook on life. It’s exactly what I expected the noir genre to be and I’m not at all disappointed.
The dialogue has this crust of dry wit/deadpan delivery which I love.
“I don’t like your manner,” Kingsley said in a voice you could have cracked a Brazil nut on.
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m not selling it.”
The clerk snapped at Degarmo’s back like a terrier.
“One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see?”
Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. “Did he say ‘whom’?”
“Yeah, but don’t hit him,” I said. “There is such a word.
Degarmo licked his lips. “I knew there was,” he said. “I often wondered where they kept it.”
I tend to criticize books if they overuse the word “was” and if the prose is very basic. This is one of those books, but I don’t care as much because it fits with the blunt story and characters. It isn’t the time for fancy prose and metaphor flexing, and Chandler showed his skill in everything else in the book.
Despite being plain prose, this next quote works because of that unexpected word to describe a mundane image:
I got a newspaper from the back of the woodbox and spread it out and dumped the soda out of the box. I stirred it around with a spoon. There seemed to be an indecent lot of baking soda, but that was all there was.
If the writing style doesn’t break the mold, there should be a layer of unusual genius to divert from the otherwise boring sentences. I think this book fits that to a T, as well as this one.
I’m excited to continue reading the rest in the series; however, I won’t be reviewing each book. Instead, after I’ve completed the series, I’ll do a chat-type post to share my overall thoughts of the series, highlight some favorite quotes, and say which book is my favorite and why. I don’t know when this’ll happen, but I don’t think any of the books are much beyond 200 pages, so it might be sooner than I imagine.
“If murderers didn’t think they could get away with their murders, very few would be committed.”
Check out my rating here.
And another noir review.