Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 8/8/2020 + 1223 more book reviews

Another great noir crime novel from Chandler. I finished reading THE BIG SLEEP, the first Philip Marlowe novel a few days ago and followed it up with this one which I found to be just as good or better! In this one, Marlowe gets drawn into a very convoluted case when he happens to see a very large man outside of an African-American establishment in Los Angeles: I stood outside the barbershop looking up at the jutting neon sign of a second floor dine and dice emporium called Florian's. A man was looking up at the sign too. He was looking up at the dusty windows with a sort of ecstatic fixity of expression, like a hunky immigrant catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty. He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck. The man called "Moose" Malloy ends up dragging Marlowe into the joint and tells him he is looking for Velma, his girlfriend who worked there 8 years previously before he was put away. The owner of the place is uncooperative and ends up dead. Marlowe decides to followup and look for Velma who may be able to lead him to Moose. And then Marlowe gets embroiled in a jewel theft involving a wealthy woman married to a very wealthy man. Along the way, he gets "sapped" a few times with a blackjack, gets involved with a psychic whose business card is used as a filter for "marihuana" cigarettes, he gets drugged and held captive by an unorthodox doctor, and eventually is able to tie all the pieces together!

An early paperback edition of this novel shows Marlowe hitting a man in the cheek with a coiled bed-spring. This was the very unusual way he was able to escape from the bogus medical clinic and I thought it also made a very interesting and unusual book cover

Again, I enjoyed this one immensely. Chandler's witty dialogue along with his detailed descriptions make these novels a pleasure to read. I'll be looking forward to reading more.

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