El llarg adeu (1953)

blackmail leads to murder as does craziness ( )

My first five-star review of 2012! What a fabulous book: a hard-boiled Steinbeck. Chandler truly is a fantastic writer that pulls you through his story with succinct yet incisive dialogue and churning plots. I liked this infinitely more than the Elliot Gould movie and significantly more than his Big Sleep novel. Do yourself a favor, read this book at the earliest opportunity! ( )

I was introduced to Chandler through my father, who had a collection of his books in Penguin paperbacks from the 1960s. Chandler has always been there for me as an early writer of crime fiction, certainly more so than Dorothy L Sayers or Nicholas Blake or Margery Allingham. So my knowledge of early crime fiction is more California noir than English aristocratic sleuths. The Long Good-bye is a well-known title by Chandler, as well as a movie set in the 1970s starring Elliott Gould. I like Chandler’s fiction. I think he’s over-rated – or rather, I think his influence on the genre is greater than he deserved. But I do like his books. One of the things I like is his certitude. Chandler was certain about everything he wrote and how he wrote it. I’m amused by the fact he despised Philo Vance of SS Van Dine’s hugely successful novels, and can only imagine his ire was stoked by Vance, and by extension Van Dine, clearly being gay. Marlowe was, of course, famously a womaniser, and all of Chandler’s novels are predicated on Chandler’s relationship with a woman. Which is not, surprisingly, how The Long Good-bye opens. Marlowe makes friends with a man, and helps the man escape justice when he brutally murders his wife. But then the murderer is murdered in Mexico… But Marlowe never believed he was guilty, and never believed the account of his suicide was legit. Throw in a California millionaire (what would be a billionaire now), a literary writer who found success as a writer of historical best-sellers but despises himself and has hit the bottle big time, and the writer’s manipulative wife… This is classic Chandler, but it’s also a book that doesn’t go where you expect it to. If you have to read a Chandler novel, it’s a good one to choose. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s especially typical of the Marlowe novels. You might as well read a couple of them. You won’t regret it. ( )

A private detective's friend is a murder suspect.

2.5/4 (Okay).

Chandler tries to be literary. His last couple books had already been gradually losing energy and humor. Here he seems to actively shun being entertaining, presumably because he thinks he has Serious Things To Say. ( )

Marlowe helps out a drunk one night and it finds that getting rid of him takes considerably longer then expected. The last in the series exclusively written by Chandler, this is a fantastic way to go. Besides, this one has my favorite Marlowe comeback like, EVER!! ( )