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Title: The Long Goodbye
Author: Raymond Chandler
Genre: Noir
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: Marlowe's woes only begin when a friend of his allegedly bashes his wife to death with a statue and then commits suicide in Mexico. Also, does anyone else picture Roger Wade as George R. R. Martin?
Thoughts: Marlowe makes most of his problems for himself.
Now that I've read three and a half Marlowe books back to back (possibly a mistake, blame the omnibus edition), I'm starting to see some patterns. He's kind of stupidly noble in a really bitter way that prevents him from ever enjoying the joys of being either good or bad. He's just kind of aggressively gray in the most miserable way possible. (Which is not to say that this is not a completely realistic way for a person to behave. Humans are remarkably good at wallowing in misery.)
In the bad books, it's annoying. In the good books, you still kind of want to shake some sense into him, but it works.
This is one of the times it works. Marlowe takes pity on a drunk and gets entangled in his life. The guy's wife gets murdered, the guy's the prime suspect, and so Marlowe helps his friend escape to Mexico where he then suicides. This is the first couple chapters. The next several chapters appears to have little to nothing to do with the first part of the story. Slowly the two converge. But it turns out not to have been as unlikely as it first appears--it's not that he stumbled onto two different parts of the same story, it's that he was pushed.
In the end, though, no one ends up happy with the result. Because this is noir, and that's the rules.
Author: Raymond Chandler
Genre: Noir
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: Marlowe's woes only begin when a friend of his allegedly bashes his wife to death with a statue and then commits suicide in Mexico. Also, does anyone else picture Roger Wade as George R. R. Martin?
Thoughts: Marlowe makes most of his problems for himself.
Now that I've read three and a half Marlowe books back to back (possibly a mistake, blame the omnibus edition), I'm starting to see some patterns. He's kind of stupidly noble in a really bitter way that prevents him from ever enjoying the joys of being either good or bad. He's just kind of aggressively gray in the most miserable way possible. (Which is not to say that this is not a completely realistic way for a person to behave. Humans are remarkably good at wallowing in misery.)
In the bad books, it's annoying. In the good books, you still kind of want to shake some sense into him, but it works.
This is one of the times it works. Marlowe takes pity on a drunk and gets entangled in his life. The guy's wife gets murdered, the guy's the prime suspect, and so Marlowe helps his friend escape to Mexico where he then suicides. This is the first couple chapters. The next several chapters appears to have little to nothing to do with the first part of the story. Slowly the two converge. But it turns out not to have been as unlikely as it first appears--it's not that he stumbled onto two different parts of the same story, it's that he was pushed.
In the end, though, no one ends up happy with the result. Because this is noir, and that's the rules.
