Farewell, My Lovely (A Philip Marlowe Novel)

Murder and mayhem, lots of twists and turns. The opening grabbed my attention, and I could not put the book down till I had finished. There were several suspects, and several victims. Great characters both good and bad. Very entertaining story!

"Farewell My Lovely" is a 1940 American Noir Crime Novel authored by Raymond Chandler. This protagonist is Philip Marlowe, a hard bitten private detective. The mystery itself is clever. Some of the writing, particularly about scenery and metaphor is masterful. To that extent the work is probably a five star crime novel.My concern and dilemma in writing this review is the really insensitive and dated vernacular and nomenclature about minorities and women. I have never worked in the publishing industry. My guess is this work would not be published as an original work by any mainstream American publisher today. I do not wish to offend the sensitivities of any reader.I do not believe in censorship. I want to read literature as written. If there is insensitivity, I use that as a means of reflection, learning and self improvement.At a strictly practical level, I have had readers tell me that they do not care about writing about scenery. I respect that, but Raymond Chandler is a master in depicting scenery. If one doe not care about scenery and metaphor, one may not enjoy this work as I do.In summary, I really like this story. I really like American Crime Noir. I love expert depiction of scenery. I love artful metaphor. In that context, I really like this work. On the other had, there is a lot of "cringe factor" contained within this work. As a parent I would not allow my youthful children to read this without very serious parental guidance. Thank You...

When you open up any dictionary and you look up the phrase Hardboiled private eye, you'll find it defined right there in black and white as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. If much of the book seems familiar, it may be that you read it many years ago or that so many of the motifs were borrowed and used by so many other private eye writers over the years. But if you want to know how it's really done, you return to the master Hardboiled craftsman himself.I always picture Philip Marlowe as Humphrey Bogart and no one can ever shake that image from me. However, Bogart only played Marlowe in the film adaptation of the first book in the series, The Big Sleep. For Farewell, My Lovely, you get the film images of Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum.But, you always get the mean streets of Los Angeles no matter how you picture Marlowe. These streets range from the seedy joints lining Central Avenue to the estates in Beverly Hills and Brentwood Heights. The streets lead of course to Chandler's fictional Bay City, loosely based on what was a crooked Santa Monica right down to the gambling boats three legal miles offshore.Marlowe here is always quick with a quip but world-weary. He's seen it all a time or two and nothing necessarily surprises him except maybe getting knocked out when he's playing bodyguard or locked up and drug-addled in a sanitarium.The very beginning of the novel sets the whole attitude as Marlowe nonchalantly accepts a great big ape of a guy, Moose Malloy, no less, throwing a guy bodily out if his way. Moose is a great character, a singleminded maniac returned to the street after eight years in the pen and determined to find his gal, Vera. Gil Brewer later created a whole novel about such a guy in The Angry Dream.All the usual Hardboiled rackets are well-represented here from blackmail to fortune telling to crooked cops to payoffs to rich folks living in a different world. Through it all, Marlowe resolutely starts adding up all these things that just don't add up and couldn't possibly be related. But what makes it such a joy to read is the fantastic prose, the descriptions of people and places that just bring them to life, often with a sardonic humor.

By this time in his writing career one thing must have been very clear to Chandler: he was pushing the genre into new territory. Elegant, thoughtful prose with a minimum of direct violence (except to Marlow's cranium). Gruesome acts do take place, but often off-stage, so to speak. Chandler seems to be turning his back on many of the pillars of the genre heretofore.

Raymond Chandler wrote about a world which has disappeared but he gives us a guided tour. This book will enthrall fans of historic mystery.

Can't recommend. Found myself skimming pages of unnecessary description of surroundings (e.g., every room, every bend in the road, every garden). Many unresolved threads - the psychic, the indian, the clinic. Worst of all, our first-person narrator apparently knew what was going on all along and didn't share it with us. I call foul.

This is one of the classic private detective stories that started the whole private detective genre. Before Travis McGee, before Lew Archer, before Spenser, there was Philip Marlowe. Elliot Gould narrates this story filling Philip Marlowe with as much life as if he was acting the role on film. Matter of fact, he did play the role in a 1975 movie version of a Raymond Chandler novel The Long Goodbye.The story was written in 1940 so be prepared to hear some words and phrases that may be unfamiliar.The plot: Private detective Philip Marlowe is investigating a dead-end missing person case when he sees a felon, Moose Malloy, barging into a nightclub called Florian's looking for his ex-girlfriend Velma Valento. The club has changed owners, so no one now there knows her. Malloy ends up killing the black owner of the club and escaping. The murder case is assigned to Lt. Nulty, a Los Angeles Police detective who has no interest in the murder of a black man. Marlowe advises Nulty to look for Malloy's girlfriend, but Nulty prefers to let Marlowe do the routine legwork and rely on finding Malloy based on his huge size and loud clothes. Marlowe decides to follow up and look for the girl.Sit back and relax and listen to Philip Marlowe solve the crime of Farewell, My Lovely.

I enjoyed this book.

História legal, bom preço.

How many superlatives can you throw at this book. It is the pinnacle of great crime fiction mainly because the way the author describes each scene in the book in great detail and all the wise cracks between the characters makes for a quick flowing read. The dialogue is the typical American quick fire banter that I love and associate with the 1950’s and the New York, Chicago and LA gangster scene Mr Chandler was in my opinion the leader of the pack of the many great crime writers that have followed in his footsteps. Writers like him only come along once in a decade or more, in this niche his prose was funny, serious, beguiling almost manic in some ways but always entertaining and thought provoking that men like the indomitable Phillip Marlowe could exist give us mere mortals someone to idolise or at the very least look up to. Yes it’s fiction but my goodness it’s great fiction if I could write a book anywhere near as good as this I would die a happy man. To say I recommend this and all his other books is an understatement it’s absolutely class.

Fünf Sterne für den Roman. Allerdings ist in der Penguin-Ausgabe von 2010 keine Einleitung von Colin Dexter vorhanden, wie hier in der Überschrift fälschlicherweise angegeben wird.

Es probablemente la más Chandler de sus novelas, pero quizás no la más entretenida de leer.