El llarg adeu (1953)

Terry Lennox, married to Sylvia, daughter of a multimillionaire needs help to escape to Mexico. He calls upon friend Marlowe for help. It seems his wife has died, and he is the assumed guilty party. But when Lennox is found dead, Marlowe is drawn into discovering the truth.
Excellent, well-written, a delightful re-read. ( )

"The bar was pretty empty. Three booths down a couple of sharpies were selling each other pieces of Twentieth Century Fox, using double arm gestures instead of money. They had a telephone on the table between them and every two or three minutes they would play the match game to see who called Zanuck with a hot idea. They were young, dark, eager, and full of vitality. They put as much muscular activity into a telephone conversation that I would put into carrying a fat man up four flights of stairs. There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream. The customer was middle-aged, handsomely dressed and drunk. He wanted to talk and he couldn't have stopped even if he hadn't really wanted to talk. He was polite and friendly and when I heard him he didn't seem to slur his words much, but you knew that he got up on the bottle and only let go of it when he fell asleep at night. He would be like that for the rest of his life, and that was what his life was. You would never know how he got that way because even if he told you it would not be the truth. At the very best a distorted memory of the truth as he knew it. There is a sad man like that in every quiet bar in the world." ( )

The sixth book in the Philip Marlowe series, "The Long Goodbye" is considerably longer than its predecessors, and stands out as quite different in terms of how the story develops. Written by an older Chandler, it abandons the standard rhythms of the series (and a lot of the private eye mystery-solving tropes) in favor of a more leisurely pace and a lot of pontificating about Los Angeles and life in general - perhaps a bit too much. It's overly long, and misses some opportunities to complicate the story, with the result being that I found myself expecting more from characters who ultimately didn't affect the narrative much. It's great to see the viewpoint of both author and character progress throughout the series, though I definitely wouldn't start with this one, and I think "The Little Sister" does a better job of combining the plot twists and philosophizing that make Marlowe so enjoyable to read. ( )

If you drink as much whiskey as is consumed in this book, within the time it takes to read the book, you'll be fucked. ( )

I was a little disappointed by the last Chandler novel I read (Farewell, My Lovely), but this one is much better. The characters are all sharply drawn, and Chandler's plotting is actually really interesting - the winding road that Marlowe takes to arrive at his solution is really fascinating and sometimes seems like it's veered away from the original plot entirely. I think the ending slumps a little - the last two chapters could probably be excised entirely without hurting the book at all - but overall really good. ( )