The Long Goodbye

tags: favorite, hardboiled detective-crime, mystery, Philip Marlowe

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From GoodRreads

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to the only friend he can trust: private investigator Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is willing to help a man down on his luck, but later Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe is drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

The Long Goodbye is Raymond Chandler's 6th Philip Marlowe novel, written in 1953. I consider it a masterpiece and have added it to my favorites list. The first book, The Big Sleep, is also a 5-star book and I loved it but it didn't earn a spot on my favorites list. Books 2 to 5 got 3 and 4 stars from me.

Philip Marlowe developed a friendship with and a "savior" complex for the down on his luck Terry Lennox. Twice, 3 times, 4 times he helped Terry. The short [about 400 pages] novel's prose is IMHO most brilliant sometimes poetic has numerous memorable characters - the most beatiful blonde femme fatale, cuckoos, vicious thugs. Throughout the story, Chandler has seamlessly inserted his opinion on law agencies, politicians, media, society's morals and ethics, rich people, consumerism, etc. without sounding preachy, just matter of fact. They were true in the 1950s and even truer nowadays.

Highly recommended.

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My favorite quotes from the book

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.

He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.

And these

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return. What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don’t like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on.

Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.

Let the law enforcement people do their dirty work. Let the lawyers work it out. They write the laws for other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers called judges so that other judges can say the first judges were wrong and the Supreme Court can say the second lot were wrong. Sure there's such a thing called law. We're up to our necks in it. About all it does is make business for lawyers.

Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.