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A mixed view of Raymond Chandler's last completed Philip Marlowe novel "Playback," his writing seemed tired...done before , lacking the usual sharp, dazzling words which made him the best in the genre. However there was only one master, a second magnitude star is way above the norm, forget the plot just digest the dialogue, Mr. Chandler was noted for, ravishing the reader with his overflowing stream of endless eloquent by-play as the action percolates in the murky background...yes the light is n...
Published in 1958, Playback is the seventh and last of the full-length Philip Marlowe novels written by Raymond Chandler. It appeared five years after The Long Goodbye, which was the sixth book in the series and which many would argue is the best book of them all. Playback is a fairly good read, but sadly, it's not on a par with many of the others in the series.Although released five years later, the events in the novel occur about a year and a half after the end of The Long Goodbye. A lawyer na...
Clocking in at a malnourished 166 pages (that’s two hundred pages less than the prosperously gutted masterpiece, The Long Goodbye) Playback is anything but the last, great Marlowe novel, and neither is it really a worthy swan song. But a Marlowe novel is a Marlowe novel is a Marlowe novel. This last time around, Marlowe gets railroaded into a job tailing a knockout redhead, which quickly turns into a muddled mystery involving blackmail, murder, gangsters, and a crappy tourist-trap town. Marlowe
I almost skipped this last of the Phillip Marlowe series, given the many middling reviews from otherwise devout Chandler fans, but I'm glad I didn't. Marlowe feels a bit more mature, a bit more maudlin perhaps than in past appearances, but he's still the hardboiled, wisecracking Marlowe I've come to know and love. The plot is a bit more pedestrian, even a bit thin at times, compared to the tight, taut suspense Chandler usually delivers, and is certainly heavier on the romance (and quite sappy at...
“Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house.” Philip Marlowe is tasked with tailing a young, rich and beautiful woman. The catch? He has no idea why and neither does the shady lawyer who hired him.That is about as short a summary as I’ve ever written, and I suppose that fits given this is the shortest of the Marlowe novels. I’ve heard from Chandler fans and through various reviews that although this was Chandl
Playback (Philip Marlowe, #7), Raymond Chandler Playback is a novel by Raymond Chandler, featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe. It was first published in Britain in July 1958; the US edition followed in October that year. Chandler died the following year; Playback is his last completed novel. At the beginning of 1952 (some 18 months after the parting of Marlowe and Linda Loring in The Long Goodbye). Marlowe is faced with the choice of turning against his client and taking up the cause o...
I looked at her legs. It was only 10 in the morning but she had legs to look at. She had brought them into my office with her. Her legs looked at me but I never found out what they thought. She balanced all of next year’s expense account on her little finger and blew smoke over it. She was wearing the kind of perfume you could invade countries for. The rest of her was what your imagination wasn’t any use for any more. I’d had a tough night that day so I only looked in her right eye. She offered
"A Little Quiet Fun At My Own Expense"The waiter set a glass down on the table in front of me. It was my sixth drink in an hour. I couldn’t even remember ordering it. I drank it. It seemed like the right thing to do. The waiter watched me put down the empty glass. “Another shot?” he asked. I nodded. “You’ll have to pay for this one,” he instructed me. I looked around the room in search of my earlier benefactor. I saw her first, sitting alone at a nearby table, then I saw her legs. They didn’t lo...
Philip Marlowe is given a task of tailing a woman by a prominent lawyer. The job is so easy Marlowe begins to wonder who the woman is and why the tailing was necessary at all. This is the whole mystery in the book. If you do not want huge spoilers, do not read the book's blurb as it gives away the only mystery element present.The only redeeming quality of the book is its length: it is the shortest novel of the series. As I mentioned before the mystery part is practically non-existent, nothing wo...
“I sat down on the couch and stared at the wall. Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house.I put the drink down on a side table without touching it. Alcohol was no cure for this. Nothing was any cure but the hard inner heart that asked for nothing from anyone.” 4.5 stars. What a taut, suspenseful story! In it, Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is hired by an influential lawyer he’s never heard of to tail a gorgeo
I guess my second or third reading. What makes Raymond Chandler so special for me is that nothing really happens,so I’m more deeply into narrative and characters,feel enchanted and read it again.This is a story of a certain mysterious woman and Marlowe with memorable wisecrack and a few corpses.Just a simple story.
Not my favorite Chandler. Actually, my least favorite Chandler novel. However, since almost everything else he has written deserves to be carved on a tablet and made into an LA Noir religion, I guess saying this one doesn't rate well against his other masterpieces isn't saying THAT much.I think part of my disappointment with this novel is it just seems hard when it should be easy and easy when it should be hard. Maybe part of my problem with it was Chandler just seemed tired of L.A. and tired of...
Hey, it's Chandler, so he gets 5 stars, even if it's probably not the best of PI Marlowe. But we get to see different shades of him. Plus the writing has the usual fire power. Interesting minor characters give voice to Chandler's world view late in his life. Sad, poignant, and accessible. Loved it. Plan to read/re-read more titles soon.
"I'm old, tired, and full of no coffee."Ever reluctant at the outset, Philip Marlowe takes another case. Curiosity takes over once in and he hammers the nail. Cold and soft, the wire bends. He claws it and drives again. It feels through the oak fibers, goes in, progressively clinking, like a fist pounding a head.Knotty wood hooks the nail. It's gone far enough to join. Hammer the hook sideways until the head's a setting sun in the plank? Not for Marlowe. No, were going to do this right. Claw it
From 1958There were entertaining scenes. But the mystery was just okay. Marlowe sleeps with two women, only one of whom is integral to the action of the plot, and then a third calls him on the phone and says she wants to marry him. Okay.
Good grief. What a difference 18 months or so makes. I read The Big Sleep and i enjoyed it up to a point but found it a souffle overly egged on the 'witty and offbeat images' ingredient but this one, Playback, I absolutely loved. There is still the wit, the clever descriptions, the tension and mystery but it simply flowed for me more and perhaps i found Marlowe more attractive as a character. He seemed more human and if Chandler sometime strayed into dangerous territory in the prose stakes he in...
'Playback', Chandler's final completed novel and the follow-up to 'The Long Goodbye', is a novel that has managed to haunt me since I read it three years ago. The prose throttles me with its speed and economy, and in this novel, more than any of Chandler's others, I feel Marlowe's humanity.Marlowe is tired, and his sense of reality is breaking down. An example: he beds Miss Vermilyea, his client's secretary, then leaves her house wondering if anything happened. He calls after her down the hallwa...
'Playback' was wonderful. I am in awe of Mr. Chandler's adroit use of language as well as his understanding of human nature - as is evident in the unrelenting popularity his books still have today and (willing to bet) for many future generations yet to come. The witty dry humor is absolutely phenomenal and why I am drawn to Mr. Chandler's work.
So it is with trepidation that I embark on the last novel Chandler finished before his death (he was partway through Poodle Springs, which was completed by Robert Parker). I have enjoyed all of Marlowe's stories, and reluctantly dipped my toe into Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer as a followup.But to this story, which felt like one of the shortest of Marlowe's tales.This was perhaps not Chandler's best novel. It lacked mystery, and really only revolved around unknown information - the circumstances...
Sorry, full review was lost by GoodReads, again. 😥 This was written in 1957, after Chandler's suicide attempt. He was in despair from the death of his wife in 1954. In this book, Marlowe seems freer, or more mature, and the snappy dialogue with the female characters has more depth and humour. "There was a woman. She was rich. She thought she wanted to marry me. It wouldn’t have worked. I’ll probably never see her again. But I remember.” “Let’s go,” she said quietly. “And let’s leave the memory i...