the long goodbye book review

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

THE LONG GOODBYE

by Raymond Chandler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 18, 1954

Philip Marlowe's Ave atque Vale runs to about 500 pages, through the sanguine incidents which attend his casual involvement with Terry Lennox, a rich woman's kept poodle whom he picks up in a bar. The murder of Sylvia Lennox takes Terry to Mexico, and a confession-suicide (and political influence) closes the case- but not for Marlowe who keeps it alive on a trail of hellcats and hoodlums, a writer with a massive guilt complex and a lovely, loose bitch, to a second murder and its relentless finale... Chandler, a literary roughneck, is probably the most polished exponent of this form of highbrow- lowbrow entertainment and has few equals if many imitators.

Pub Date: March 18, 1954

ISBN: 0394757688

Page Count: 380

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: March 23, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1954

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

Share your opinion of this book

More by Raymond Chandler

BOOK REVIEW

by Raymond Chandler

by Raymond Chandler edited by Byron Preiss

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS | SUSPENSE | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER

More by Kathy Reichs

by Kathy Reichs

by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series ( Stone Cold , 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

More by C.J. Box

by C.J. Box

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Betting Sites
• Online Casinos
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, book of a lifetime

The long goodbye, if not the best or most technically accomplished of the marlowe novels, is without question benjamin black's favourite, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails, thanks for signing up to the breaking news email.

Since life is an ongoing project, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to choose an all-time favourite crime novel – there are so many I haven't read yet. Georges Simenon's Dirty Snow is a masterpiece, but there are probably dozens of Simenon's romans durs – "hard" novels, as he called them – that are as good, if not better. Could I choose Dirty Snow as my favourite Simenon over, say, the eerily cheerful The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, or the wonderfully claustrophobic The Strangers in the House?

And then there is Richard Stark: which of the Parker novels would I plump for, since pretty well all of them are simply superb? With this caveat firmly displayed, I shall say that Raymond Chandler seems to me the master of crime fiction, and that The Long Goodbye, if not the best or most technically accomplished of the Marlowe novels, is without question my favourite.

• The World is Full of Married Men by Jackie Collins, book of a lifetime
• The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, book of a lifetime
• My book of a lifetime...Treasure Island By Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Long Poem Anthology edited by Michael Ondaatje, book of a lifetime
• Confessions by Augustine: Christian masterpiece fascinate and inspires

Chandler never wrote with such passionate conviction as he does in this long and darkly tormented work. In the figure of the best-selling but self-hating author Roger Wade, we glimpse an exaggerated version of Chandler himself, who throughout his writing life chafed under the label of "mere" thriller-writer.

He complained repeatedly and with bitterness against highbrow critics, such as Edmund Wilson, who failed to see, Chandler believed, the artistry and stylistic polish of his work. In fact, Chandler was valued and praised, far more than he acknowledged: as a serious drunk, he preferred martyrdom to stardom.

The Argentinean novelist Rodrigo Fresán suggests that throughout the seven novels in which he figures, Marlowe truly falls in love with only one person, the ambiguous and gentlemanly Terry Lennox, a subtle variation on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby. That Lennox turns out to be a scoundrel is not the point; the point is Marlowe's confused and melancholy love for him.

After Lennox has gone from his life, for good, he imagines, Marlowe makes a pilgrimage to Victor's, the bar where he used to meet his old friend. The image of him sitting alone at the bar as the day wanes is one of the most touching and oddly moving that Chandler ever wrote. As the tough cop Bernie Ohls has it, "You live pretty lonely . . ." Marlowe is supposed to be hard-boiled, but the fact is, inside he's as soft as the evening light fading in the bar window behind him.

Benjamin Black's 'Even the Dead' is published by Penguin

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre