It’s a brave author that takes a beloved character and creates a new story for them – and that’s exactly what Denise Mina has done here with Raymond Chandler’s famous private detective, Philip Marlowe.
Marlowe is mulling over a case that he’s closed that doesn’t feel right when he gets a summons to the sprawling Montgomery estate set high above Beverly Hills. The young heiress to the family fortune, Chrissie Montgomery, is missing and Marlowe is asked to find her. However, her elderly and dying father isn’t taking any chances – he’s hired another private detective who Marlowe knows well in order to set the rivals against each other in finding his daughter. As Marlowe gets nearer to the truth, a murder is committed and Marlowe has to consider whether Chrissie really is safest returning to her family.
It’s been a long time since I read a Raymond Chandler book, but this felt authentic and credible – Mina’s Marlowe is a hard-drinking, deep-thinking kind of guy with a sound (if idiosyncratic) moral code. He inhabits the seedier side of Los Angeles, visiting Skid Row and some dodgy bars in pursuit of his aims. He knows everybody, yet trusts few – and is quite happy to use underhand methods to get what he wants. He has a yearning for beautiful women, yet an inability to have a relationship. Sounds quite Chandler-esque to me!
I enjoyed the mystery in this book – it cleverly wound together a lot of threads and the solution was believable and in the spirit of the originals. Chandler’s books don’t have cosy, happy endings – there is the sense of justice being done, but also that life is messy and imperfect.
I really loved the way that Mina used the settings within the novel so vividly to create an almost cinematic feeling – I could picture the luxury of the Montgomery estate with its tunnel of jacaranda trees as easily as I could imagine the squalor of the Brody Hotel. Characters are also described in filmic detail – a bead of sweat rolling down a face, bloodshot eyes, a cheap suit that doesn’t fit. I liked being able to see the detail of Marlowe’s world.
The heat described in the novel brings a lot of the tension – there is a restless, hazy, claustrophobic feeling as Marlowe navigates his version of LA. Indeed, the heat adds to the sense that brutality is never far away as tempers fray and characters sweat.
I’d recommend this to fans of Chandler’s original books, but also think this brings Marlowe to a new audience – I suspect that Mina’s Marlowe is more acceptable to a modern reader than the originals which probably reflect the time in which they were written. Indeed, Mina’s Marlowe seems to swerve a lot of the criticism aimed at older texts – racism, sexism, homophobia – but without diluting the impact of the hyper-masculine Marlowe and his tough world. If detective novels are your thing, this is an entertaining, often drily-humorous and lively addition to the Philip Marlowe series.
Thanks to NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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Header photo by 𝓴𝓘𝓡𝓚 𝕝𝔸𝕀 on Unsplash
