Creator of the famous Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler elevated the
American hard-boiled detective genre to an art form. Chandler's last
four novels, published here in one volume, offer ample opportunity to
savor the unique and utterly compelling fictional world that made his
works modern classics.
The Lady in the Lake moves Marlowe out of his usual habitat of city
streets and into the mountains outside of Los Angeles in his strange
search for a missing woman. The Little Sister takes Marlowe to
Hollywood, where he tries to find a sweet young thing's missing brother,
uncovering on the way a little blackmail, a lot of drugs, and more than
enough murder. In The Long Goodbye, a case involving a war-scarred
drunk and his nymphomaniac wife has Marlowe constantly on the move: a
psychotic gangster's on his trail, he's in trouble with the cops, and
more and more corpses keep turning up. Playback features a
well-endowed redhead who leads Marlowe to the California coast to solve
a tale of big money and, of course, murder.
Throughout these masterpieces, Marlowe's wry humor and existential sense
of his job prove yet again why he has become one of the most recognized
and imitated characters in fiction.
Featuring the iconic character that inspired the forthcoming film
Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson.