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Description edit
A movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend and a pair of siblings with a shared secret lure Marlowe into the less than glamorous and more than a little dangerous world of Hollywood fame. Chandler's first foray into the industry that dominates the company town that is Los Angeles.
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Quotes edit
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“Let the telephone ring, please. Let there be somebody to call up and plug me into the human race again....Nobody has to like me. I just want to get off this frozen star.See also http://lifeloom.com/III2Ergang.htm”
The narrator, Philip Marlowe.
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They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.
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look of men who are poor and yet proud of their power, watching always for ways to make it felt, to shove it into you and twist it and grin and watch you squirm, ruthless without malice, cruel and yet not always unkind. What would you expect them to be? Civilization had no meaning for them. All they saw of it was the failures, the dirt, the dregs, the aberrations and the disgust.
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California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.
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Her voice faded off into a sort of sad whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment.
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“Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood—and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail-order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.”
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He got the cigarette wearily into his mouth and drew on it with the infinite languor of a decadent aristocrat moldering in a ruined château.
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It made a sort of high keening noise, like a couple of pansies fighting for a piece of silk.
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There are days like that. Everybody you meet is a dope. You begin to look at yourself in the glass and wonder.
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The smell of old dust hung in the air as flat and stale as a football interview.
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She stood so that I had to practically push her mammaries out of the way to get through the door. She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
First Sentence edit
The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: "Philip Marlowe...Investigations."
Series & Lists edit
This is book 5 of 9 in Philip Marlowe. (standard series)
Preceded by The Lady in the Lake, and followed by The Long Goodbye.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Raymond Chandler (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Country: UK
Publication Date: 1949
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Country: UK
Publication Date: 1949
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 256
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 741.5973
Subjects edit
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Movie Connections edit
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