Edited by Byron Preiss. 1988 (July 2014)
This is an enjoyable collection of short stories involving
Philip Marlowe. All the stories are quite readable and build on the atmosphere
and character that Raymond Chandler created. One is by Chandler himself,
previously unpublished. (I half suspect that this is a publisher’s project to
create a new book on the basis of the rights to one story. But never mind
that.) The stories suffer a little from the compressed format and the need to
introduce and wrap up a crime in 15 to 20 pages, although I believe that was Chandler’s
format in many cases.
I like the chance to see so many contemporary writers
interpreting Marlowe’s character in their own way. Some are a bit heavy-handed
with the famous hard-boiled writing style, but some (such as Simon Brett) are
quite clever and witty. A few downplay it entirely to focus on Marlowe’s
character and situation. What they all do effectively is work with Marlowe’s
character, placing him in different settings and times to see how he would
resolve a problem. These Marlowes, like Chandler’s Marlowe, often make
intuitive jumps without much real detective work, but that’s because they are
not so much about working out a mystery, as working out a situation with toughness
and honour.
Also quite interesting are the comments in the author’s
notes after their contribution. They describe how they see Chandler’s influence
(or lack of influence) on them as writers of detective stories and what they
think Chandler achieved. The diversity of their impressions builds a portrait
of Chandler’s influence on writing that is quite revealing and diverse, from Sara
Paretsky whose reaction was to try to find a more rounded role for a woman
character to Paco Ignacio Taibo who adopted a gritty neorealism as an
appropriate alternative to Latin magic realism.
The overwhelming sense, of course, is one of futility in
conflict with a deep personal honour. Coming out of the Depression, the world war
and the Cold War, it’s easy to see how American (and other) readers would
recognize the sense of darkness and futility. But against that is the belief in
the individual standing up to whatever comes, even at the risk of great personal
cost. As one writer, Robert Campbell, suggests, it’s the American frontier
cowboy reset in the gritty urban scene.
