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If you love Robert B. Parker's Spenser, get acquainted with Philip Marlowe, the inspiration behind Parker's creation.
Raymond Chandler is widely considered the successor to
Dashiell Hammett as the world's premier hard-boiled detective fiction writer.
Some say that Chandler's character, Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, is the archetypal
private eye, more iconic and more enduring than any of the private eye characters
created by not only Hammett, but the likes of Ross MacDonald, and Mickey
Spillane.
Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, and Robert B. Parker's Spenser, is a man of principle.
Despite his tough exterior and rough manners, Philip Marlowe follows a code of honor
that stands out as endearingly old-fashioned in a corrupt, often vicious,
world. Chandler's novels can be considered morality tales. Beneath all the
roughhousing and sexual tension can be detected a critique of American society,
run by greed and big money, that makes men like Marlowe necessary.
Chandler's writing is characterized by arresting lines that set
a scene, the throwaway wisecrack, novel descriptions of dead men, and creative
accounts of what it's like to take a bullet and or have a punch land square on
your face. Most of all though, the greatness of Chandler is found in his wonderful
dialogue. Perhaps no one in real life ever talked that concisely and cleverly, but
when you read it you hope maybe they did.
This week, Flashback Friday focuses on Chandler's most
famous novel, and his first, The Big Sleep (1939), a notoriously mixed-up
story, which nonetheless rewards successive readings. If you aren't familiar
with the hard-boiled tradition, this is the novel to plunge into to get a sense
of the genre's possibilities and difficulties.
In The Big Sleep, a dying millionaire hires private eye
Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome
daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion.
Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the
complications he gets caught up in.
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