In Silent Retreats, Philip Deaver shows us what so few writers can: the sometimes delicate, sometimes harrowing, shifting of real emotion beneath the everyday. With deft turns of phrase and a sharp eye for telling detail, Deaver's haunted runners, love-struck teens, and overstressed businessmen seeking serenity reflect to us things about ourselves we have always known, but never stated. In the early-60s, small Illinois town setting of "Arcola Girls", an O Henry Award winning story, Deaver depicts with tenderness teenage love, longing, and loss. Why this book is out of print is beyond me.

Each of the Novellas has a protagonist of unusual proportions, attempting to find something just slightly beyond himself or herself. While being a part of contemporary fiction, there is a certain historical perspective such as the disposed, wandering Jew of Aharon Appelfeld's "The Isles of St. George." Almost alone on this island, he wants to forget Europe, Israel,and his past. One of the most interesting characters in my opinion is Yani in David Grossman's "Yani on the Mountain." Here is a soldier left to oversee a mountain after the war of 1973. The mountain becomes a support, a challenge, something to be overcome, but his friend confronts him, "Hiding uphere on the mountain--armoring himself with hostility and contempt. Afraid. Afraid.." Benjamin Tammuz has one brother living his life vicariously through watching his brother's life unfold in a near-by house. "The Brother" is a thoughtful tale of envy, suppressed love, and hatred. In Yaakov Shabtai's "Uncle Peretz Takes Flight", a zany Jewish communist wants to save the world (which he doesn't even like very much), attending meetings during the day and coming home to climb up on the roof in preparation for flight. Altogether, this is a wonderful collection of stories.

Sydney Morning Herald:(28 August, '93) Book released.Headline: "Love and death in the bush" "It is always a pleasure to encounter a new work which attempts to tell the story of Australia's pastoral expansion as it really was. This is especially the case when the story is told by a new Aboriginal writer who gives the Aboriginal people an appropriate emphasis and is explicit about how they were treated. It is even more satisfying when that writer retains his or her sense of balance and does not oversimplify the situation. All of these are rewards that readers will experience from Philip McLaren's first novel. The novel is not an easy one to classify. The tradition it is closest to is probably the Australian pastoral family saga. To this popular but relatively unsubtle genre, McLaren has added a crucial, previously missing dimension. Whereas in earlier works of this kind, Aboriginal people were marginal and often reduced to 'faithful servants' or 'dangerous myalls', McLaren tells at least half the story from the viewpoint of his Aboriginal characters. Like other books in the tradition, this one is strong on plot and narrative momentum."

My second Raymond Chandler novel has elevated my opinion of him even higher than I thought possible. Chandler is an absolute master of the noir genre. His grittiness, dialogue and characters are matched by almost no one else. This book just flies by and is such a page turner that I had it finished in less than two days. Too bad Chandler wasn't more prolific; I'll have all of his stuff read by the end of the year.

The Long Goodbye brings Marlowe into constant conflict with lowlifes almost immediately after the book starts. Marlowe befriends a drunk who happens to be married to a beautiful, rich heiress. The only problem with this is she's a nymphomaniac and ends up dead. Marlowe helps her hubby escape and ends up in trouble with the law (of course). The rest of the book sees Marlowe hired to keep a famous author sober so he can finish his novel. Marlowe ends up entwined with the author's wife and their crazy butler, Candy. Needless to say, all of these threads wind together in the end. Even revealing this much to you in no way spoils the book. There's so much going on here that you'll be constantly wondering how Chandler is going to bring it all to a head. He does, and he does it beautifully.

The book is top heavy with all sorts of clever dialogue. Marlowe's putdowns lead to endless howls of laughter (at one point, he describes a guy with as having a "face like a collapsed lung"). My favorite part of the book is when Marlowe confronts the three quack doctors while trying to track down the alcoholic author. Marlowe is the man!!

This book should be required reading for anyone interested in noir. I'd recommend it to anyone who just likes to read. I can't wait to read more of Chandler's novels. I'll try and space his books out so they last a long time. Too bad Raymond Chandler didn't start writing at an earlier age.

Every time I finish reading one of Chandler's Marlowe novels, I end up feeling depressed, because it's one less Chandler novel that I can read for the first time. In my mind, he's that good -- he is one of the only writers that I am consistenly incapable of setting down to go to sleep... I finished the last half of "The Long Goodbye" at about 5:00 am -- I was so wrapped up in it, that I failed to notice the time. Alas. Now, as for that review...

IF YOU HAVEN'T READ ANY CHANDLER, you should stop reading this and go take a look at his first Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep. It's worthwhile to read them in order, or at the least, to read that one first... you'll get a good feeling for whether or not you like Marlowe, and you'll learn a bit more about him. Then, if you like that, come back and take another look at this review.

IF YOU HAVE READ OTHER CHANDLER, then you already know, to some degree, what you're in for. You know Chandler's style, and I can promise you that this book offers up more of it, in abundance. I was a little thrown off for the first 50-some pages, because Marlowe has moved out of his trademark apartment and into a small house in a quiet residential neighborhood, and that didn't jive with me... but it works. Marlowe is, in his way, maturing. (If you've read his unfinished final work, Poodle Springs, then you know Marlowe will eventually get married. Perhaps this evolution says as much about Chandler as about his beloved P.I.)

Once the plot starts moving, of course, you're just along for the ride. Like all Marlowe novels, you have that perfect feeling of riding shotgun in the mind and conscience of a fascinating and well-developed character, and it's enough to sustain you through WHATEVER Chandler cares to write about. But, as I said, this is Vintage (no pun intended) Chandler -- some of his best work. Like several other books of his, I would give it more than 5 stars if I could, because nothing he wrote deserves less. The plot develops in three acts, which seem unrelated until he begins to pull them together, and when he does so, it is nothing less than amazing to behold. (I thought I was outguessing him, and knew what was going to happen. Stupid me -- he was still three steps ahead of me, and I had egg all over my face when I was done with the last page. I love him for that.)

If you're a mystery fan, or even a fan of good stylistic writing, this is some of the best stuff you could hope for. Call it pulp if you like, and say that Hammett outsold him if you must, but for my money, Chandler had more style than anyone else who's ever tackled the genre. Marlowe remains one of the best, most complete, and most enjoyable creations of literature that I have ever found, and I only wish that Chandler had left us more of him. *sigh*

BOTTOM LINE: If you haven't read this one yet, I envy you. It's a hell of a ride, and it's got plenty of re-read value. Worth owning, and a must for Chandler fans.

This epic Raymond Chandler novel is his most finely crafted and perhaps the best ever of its genre. Featuring Chandler's world-weary private detective, it mixes an intriguing plot with fascinating social comment. The plot concerns Marlowe's dealings with a drunk named Terry Lennox and his role in an escape from a murder charge to Mexico. Most of the novel, however is taken up in the rich suburbs of L.A. It has everything that all the best Chandler/Marlowe books have, clever, poetic, often humourous dialogue, cynicism, characters who seem tired of life and yet so full of it, and the sun-drenched L.A. setting. Those used to the more pacy narrative writings such as 'The Big Sleep' and 'The Lady in the Lake' may be a tad cool on this book as it spends as much time dissecting the lives of its downtrodden characters as it does unfold the plot. The later film version, brilliant though it is, does not even do this book justice. EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK!!

My first intro to philip k dick was at the end credits of of the film "bladerunner"...where i saw his name in small print...thus, i picked up this volume with some passing curiousity only to discover with pleasure, that within it's pages was another story made into the film "we can remember it for you wholesale". i thoroughly enjoyed the story in it's own right and proceeded to find another story called "second variety" which also became a film.Between stories i was hooked...in no time i was reading other great stories in this collection, such as "minority report"-which has been ruined by the overdone version of it for the screen...too bad....
anyway i found myself immersed in a world where the paths of dreams and reality were so confusing and thought provoking ...this volume is a collection of earlier works, and i think it's one of the best places to start; but the best, i think, is to be found in his latter longer works such as "do androids dream of electric sheep' and "the three stigmata...'....this volume is like an appetizer that may make you want to read pkd to the furthermost...

The PKD reader is an excellent introduction to this seminal SF author's short fiction. Most all of his major pieces are here, as well as some enjoyable underrated works. Mr. Dick's greatness is shown here by the stories in this volume. Also, there are four (at least) movies or potential movies made from the stories here. It's not uncommon for an SF novel to be made into a movie, but a short story is something else again. And yet, from the wonderful "We Can Remember It For You, Wholesale" (a classic Dick story) the classic SF film Total Recall was made; likewise for Screamers from "Second Variety. Steven Spielberg is currently filming "The Minority Report" with Tom Cruise. "Paycheck" has been optioned. All four of these stories are excellent, top-notch science fiction. "Minority", in particular, is awesome, and stands as one of my all-time favorite pieces of short SF. One can also see, during the course of reading this book, just how much Philip K. Dick grew as a writer during his career. Early stories featured here such as "Fair Game" and "The Hanging Stranger" while certainly good, have a VERY pulp-ish feel. This is offset by wonderful later stories such as the one mentioned, and other such as "The Father-Thing", "The Last of The Masters", and "War Veteran." Dick's writing style is compelling, fast-paced, readable, and thought-provoking, and you can see why he is held in such high regard by fans and critics alike. These are some of the best SF shorts written since the likes of Heinlein and Clarke ruled the roost. It's sad that he only started receiving real recognition after his untimely death in 1982 (just before Blade Runner was released. Pick up this book, and see why it has been said that "100 years from now, Philip K. Dick may be looked back upon as the greatest writer of the second half of the 20th century."

Might someone please list the stories included in this volume? I really don't need editorial, just the titles. I can't exactly purchase something if I don't know what I'll be getting.

I initially approached this book with a great deal of trepidation. I had never read Dostoyevsky, and was concerned that I would get bogged down in some lengthy, mind-numbingly boring, nineteenth-century treatise on the bestial nature of man or something. I am happy to report this is not the case. Instead, and to my delight, it is a smoothly flowing and fascinating story of a young man who succumbs to the most base desire, and the impact this has both psychologically and otherwise on himself and those around him.

To be sure, the book seems wordy in places, but I suspect this has to do with the translation. And what translator in his right mind would be bold enough to edit the great Dostoyevsky? But this is a very minor problem.

What we get with Dostoyevsky is dramatic tension, detailed and believable human characters, and brilliant insight into human nature. Early in the novel our hero meets and has a lengthy conversation with Marmeladov, a drunkard. This conversation is never uninteresting and ultimately becomes pathetic and heartbreaking, but I kept wondering why so much time was spent on it. As I got deeper into the book, I understood why this conversation was so important, and realized that I was in the hands of a master storyteller. This is also indicative of the way in which the story reveals itself. Nothing is hurried. These people speak the way we actually speak to one another in real life, and more importantly, Dostoyevsky is able to flesh out his characters into whole, three-dimensional human beings.

And what a diverse group of characters! Each is fleshed out, each is marvelously complex. Razujmikhin, the talkative, gregarious, good-hearted, insecure and destitute student; Sonia, the tragic child-prostitute, with a sense of rightness in the world; Petrovich, the self-important, self-made man, completely out of touch with his own humanity; Dunia, the honorable, wronged sister: we feel like we know these people because we've met people like them. They fit within our understanding of the way human beings are.

Dostoyevsky also displays great insight into human nature. Svidrigailov, for example, talks of his wife as liking to be offended. "We all like to be offended," he says, "but she in particular loved to be offended." It suddenly struck me how true this is. It gives us a chance to act indignantly, to lash out at our enemies, to gain favor with our allies. I don't believe I've ever seen this thought expressed in literature before. In fact, it never occurred to me in real life! Petrovich, Dunia's suitor, not only expects to be loved, but because of his money, and her destitution, he expects to be adored! To be worshipped! He intentionally sought out a woman from whome he expected to get this, and is comletely flummoxed when she rejects him. His is an unusual character, but completely realized.

There is so much more to talk about: the character of Raskolnikov, which is meticulously and carefully revealed; the sense of isolation which descends on him after committing his crime; the cat and mouse game played on him by the police detective. I could go on and on. I haven't even mentioned the historical and social context in which this takes place. Suffice to say this is a very rich book.

Do not expect it to be a rip-roaring page turner. Sit down, relax, take your time, and savor it. It will be a very rewarding experience. And thank you SL, for recommending it.

This is book is one of the greatest novels written. It was however written originally as a piece of propaganda. Its author was a political conservative who was concerned about the spread of Western ideas in Russia and how they could destroy society. It was a theme that he was to return to in some of his other novels notably the Devils. The book was written at a time when novels produced in Russia had to be supportive of the autocratic system and this was passed by a state board.

The central theme is about a young student who decides to kill an older woman in his apartment block. The reason for the murder is not gain but rather to show that he is a person who is free and like a Napoleon. Dostoevsky also intended to write another novel called the drunkard at the same time. The plot of that novel involved a man who forces his daughter into prostitution because of his inability to control his urges. Instead of bringing them out as separate novels Dostoevsky intertwines the two stories and makes the young prostitute the means by which his main character can be redeemed.

The book starts with the murder and follows the gradual realisation by the police of the identity of the murderer. Although the book started out as a simple expose of the way that western ideas could corrupt the youth of Russia it grew into something else. In part that was because of the development, some time after the novel was published, of philosophical systems which stressed a moralism of self actualisation. The sorts of systems of Nietchze and Kirkagaard. It is also a novel which tends to speak to young people. At least once in a young person's life they feel like the hero, wanting to do some act which defines them as superior to the common heard, to express their freedom or individuality. Ironically they identify with the hero who is meant to be an example of a person who is redeemed by rejecting the sorts of ideas which is the reason why people now read the book.

Whilst the main attraction of the book is a message which was at variance with the reason it was written it is still a classic. Everyone has to read this as it is one of the most remarkable books written.

This book was written in 1865-1866 and shows the dark side of the human psyche. A young man (Rodion) commits a horrible, disgusting crime for two main reasons: 1) He believes that he is above the rest of humanity and that it is "permissible" for him to commit murder and 2) He believes he will be doing society a huge favor by getting rid of this old woman. He murders the old woman and is overcome with grief and guilt, although he doesn't recognize them as such. He is angry about these feelings because, as a superior human being (which is believes he really is), he shouldn't be having these kinds of emotions. The novel continues through his emotional hell and finally, at the end, his redemption through the love of a young woman. The details of this novel are incredible and, in my opinion, far surpass those found in the thriller novels of today. Dostoyevsky has a style that has yet to be equalled. This is not a "quick and easy" read, it is a somewhat heavy read, but it is (in my opinion) worth every minute of the reader's time!

It's been awhile since I've read a mystery series that has grabbed me with the intensity of Phillip Kerr's Berlin trilogy. Right from the start, his writing reminds you of Raymond Chandler, though more vivid and descriptive. But Phillip Marlowe never had to worry about ending up in a concentration camp and that threat gives the first two novels in this series even more of an edge. Kerr creates a dead on accurate feel for what it was like to live in Nazi Germany before the outbreak of the war. Like all good historical fiction, famous names grace the pages as minor characters, including Goering and Renhard Heydrich. Their appearances give the books weight, but Kerr is careful not to overdo it. Fans of Caleb Carr's superb novel "The Alienist" in particular should love this series as well as anyone with an interest in Nazi Germany.

I've been teaching detective fiction for a decade, and I have a book on the topic coming out from Macmillan this year. For my money (as I say in my book, "The Post-Colonial Detective"), the "Berlin Noir" trilogy is the finest work of hard-boiled detection ever published (based on distinguished writing, terrific plot, and fascinating characters and setting.) I've taught all three of these novels, and the students are crazy about them. I loaned them to a friend who teaches Nazi history, and he thought they were extremely accurate. If you can get hold of a map of pre-war Berlin (the Britannica has one that is adequate), you can follow along from street to street and building to building. Kerr's novel "A Philosophical Investigation" is future detection with the philosopher Wittgenstein as an important plot element, and virtual reality murders and serial killings and a woman detective. I thought my students would hate it, but they were crazy about it, too. Read Kerr, and spread the news.

I read this trilogy almost three years ago, yet it regularly comes to mind as one of the most enjoyable books I've read. As someone who reads primarily non-fiction or fiction by "great" writers, I ventured to read something different with Berlin Noir. Three years later, I am still searching for a comparable novel in this genre. Kerr's presentation matures throughout these novels. The hackneyed detective that he presents in March Violets, transforms slowly into a fuller, more entertaining character. Bernie Gunther loses his overuse of trite, detective-style similes by the end of the first story. By then, the reader is enveloped in a dark world of mystery and political barbarity. Kerr's portrait of Berlin is enticingly eerie. His characters are cut from typical molds, but are presented with enough freshness to keep the reader very interested. And using the different backdrops of pre-war, war-time, and post-war Germany, Kerr was able to modify the setting but maintain the same dark intensity.

I was sorry to finish this trilogy. It is fantastic escapist literature. I have read a couple of the J. Robert Janes novels, although neither the plots, nor the characters compare favorably to Berlin Noir.

While Philip K. Dick never fails to impress me with his brilliance, the publisher succeed in writing a sketchy edition of these short stories. Every story has its own thought behind it - a deeper meaning. My favorite stories were "Some Kinds of Life", "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", and "Adjustment Team" which each story brings a whole new concept that has been exploited in recent media. However, while entranced in these short bursts of envigorating stories, one can become distracted with the large amount of typos in this edition. The abscence of characters and grammatical errors often caused me to stop reading smoothly and re-read the sentence. Ultimately, I was disgusted by this bad representation of such a masterpiece.

I would recommend people to buy this book who are interested in Dick's works, but do not have the time to immerse themselves in a full-fledged novel. These stories take approximately twenty minutes each and are all amusing. A wonderful read, but the publisher might want to proofread the writing.

It is a credit to Philip K. Dick's talent that even in his early days - at a time when he was cranking out stories just to keep food on the table - that he was able to write so much fiction that is not only good, but great.

In this second volume of a five book set that includes essentially all his short works, we get to read more of his earliest tales and find there is little to disappoint here. The title piece is the short story which was adapted into the movie Total Recall. I like the movie well enough, but outside the premise, there is little that is really similar to the original story, which has much more of an emphasis on the comic than on action.

In fact, the majority of these stories have a comic touch. Since these are tales of dark futures - most involve Earth's that are either environmentally wrecked or repressive dictatorships - the humor prevents things from getting too depressing.

You don't have to be a Dick fan to enjoy these stories, nor even much of a science fiction fan (though it helps); this is just a fantastic collection of short stories that are both fun and thought-provoking. What more could you want?

As I recall the movie Total Recall, it was a more interesting than usual Summer blockbuster, though still marred by excessive special effects and overlength. It had an intriguing basic premise, but the nuances of the story kept getting lost amidst all the exploding heads. The movie is based, like the equally uneven Blade Runner (see Orrin's review of the book), on the work of the cult favorite sci-fi author, Philip K. Dick. But while movie tie-in versions of Blade Runner abound (Dick's original, more descriptive, title was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall is based on just a short story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, which is harder to find. Until that is I stumbled upon this cheesy looking, but gem filled, collection of stories by various authors, each of which is the basis for a recent science fiction film.

Dick's original short story is, predictably, a great improvement over the film, idea-filled rather than action-packed. While Douglas Quail may be a miserable little salaried employee, for the West Coast Emigration Bureau, he has one abiding dream, "Before I die I'll see Mars." Such a trip though would be enormously expensive and his wife constantly derides his ambition. Lucky for him, Rekal, Incorporated, can implant it's customers with false memories that will make it seem as if they've actually experienced their fondest dreams:

Was this the answer? After all, an illusion, no matter how convincing, remained nothing more than an illusion. At least objectively. But subjectively--quite the opposite entirely.

So Quail goes to Rekal for the Mars "extra-factual memory implant," complete with a scenario that has him acting as an agent for Interplan. Then, as the process gets underway, an unusual thing happens; under sedation he begins to recover genuine memories of a past trip to Mars. As one of the technicians explains:

He wants a false memory implanted that corresponds to a trip he actually took. And a false reason which is the real reason. He's telling the truth; he's a long way down in the narkidrine. The trip is very vivid in his mind--at least under sedation. But apparently he doesn't recall it otherwise. Someone, probably at a government military-sciences lab, erased his conscious memories; all he knew was that going to Mars meant something special to him, and so did being a secret agent. They couldn't erase that; it's not a memory but a desire, undoubtedly the same one that motivated him to volunteer for the assignment in the first place.

Realizing the gravity of their situation, the folks at Rekal hustle him out the door and refund half his money. But now Quail starts to get fragmentary memories of a Mars trip, some from the implant and some from the real trip, so he returns to Rekal to get the matter straightened out. Meanwhile, agents from Interplan, who have been monitoring his thoughts against just such an eventuality, show up to try and kill him before he can reveal the details of his secret mission to Mars. Quail convinces them to have another try at implanting false memories, but this time the genuine memories that are recovered are even more bewildering.

It's a clever, twisty story, somewhat reminiscent of a really good Twilight Zone. In addition, over the space of just twenty or so pages, Dick raises some unsettling questions about memory, desire, delusion and reality, and how they all interact in the human mind. Total Recall is a perfectly adequate way to kill a couple hours; We Can Remember it For You Wholesale, though it takes just a half hour to read, will keep you pondering for a good long while.

GRADE: A

Clever is a good word to sum up Philip K Dick's short stories. His plots and visions of dystopian futures are imaginative, occasionally thought provoking, and satisfying. However, his writing... isn't. He has an unfortunate tendancy to tell instead of show - to lead the reader by the hand through each twist and turn in his characters' heads, put in a lot of clumsy, not-quite-believeable dialog, and then beat you over the head with the punch line at the end. It's as if he's in such a hurry to get you to understand his point that he can't be bothered with such irrelvancies as believable characters and situations.
This is not to say that the stories aren't good: they are! I enjoyed "The Minority Report" and "We Remember it for You Wholesale" (much more of a commedy in Dick's incarnation than the movie) in particular. But what we have here is one of the few authors who is improved by being turned into a screenplay. Even "Ahnold" - never accused of over-subtlety - leant a sense of mystery and believable confusion to Total Recall almost entirely lacking in the short story that inspired it.

With the appearance of the movie I just had to read the story again. 'The Minority Report' is a clever story and it does show tentative grasping at topics that were later to become so seminal in all of Philip Dick's work. What is real? Would an ability to see the future consolidate reality before it even happened? Not so according to this story, because there are ways of seeing and times of seeing.

With 'Blade Runner' a successful movie with a 'cops'n'robbers' theme, I guess this one just had to follow. I haven't seen the movie yet, so I make no comment in advance, but I am encouraged that the title is preserved (unlike 'Blade Runner' or 'Total Recall') and so is the lead character's name. Unfortunately the renaming of the precogs, as I have read in reviews of the film, does seem rather weak.

Of course, in all collections of stories, different readers will have different favourites. In this collection I particularly like 'Autofac' but for sheer humour and unpredictability my favourite is 'If There Were No Benny Cemoli'. Now, what a movie that story could make!

I have often seen hawked about the notion that the work of Philip Dick is a precursor to cyberpunk. Personally I loathe cyberpunk and yet Philip Dick is my favourite author. Have I missed soemthing here?

In this fourth volume of the five-book collection of Dick's short stories, it is put forth (in the amusing "Waterspider") that science fiction authors are actually pre-cognitive. In a later story, PKD himself foretells Richard Nixon's election to the Presidency in 1968...four years before the event! Probably a lucky guess, but who knows....

This collection comprises stories written in the late 1950s and early '60s, a period when Dick was also taking off as a novelist. Some of this has had an influence on his short stories, which are generally longer than before, and which, in some cases are early versions of what would eventually become novels such as the Simulacra and the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Generally speaking, these are all good to great stories. The title story - made into a movie last year - is a clever little mystery, and that is just one of the gems within. Although most of the stories are disconnected, many involve precognition and most have a bit of dark humor running them. Some - such as Orpheus with Clay Feet - are strictly humorous, while others are far more serious.

As with the other volumes in this series, this is a great collection with very little in the way of bad stories - quite an accomplishment considering how quickly some of these were cranked out. For fans of science fiction, especially the off-beat sort which was Dick's specialty, this is highly recommended.

I recently listened to the unabridged version of this book narrated by Elliott Gould, and while Chandler's glimpse of 1940's era Los Angeles was surely entertaining, I still like Dashiell Hammett's "Continental Op" novels better. In Farewell, My Lovely, private dick Philip Marlowe starts out working for a barber on a minor job and unrealistically stumbles onto a murder by a hulk of an ex-con, looking for his old girl Velma in a club where she used to work. Marlowe then is mysteriously contacted out of the blue to provide security for a shady jewel transaction, in which a rich dandy is to attempt to buy back some precious jade from the thieves who stole it.

The novel moves at a brisk pace, and while some of the plot twists seem a little forced, they are entertaining nonetheless. One of my main problems with the story is that Marlowe seems to spend most of the novel putting his life in danger, getting knocked out, shot at or drugged, without much of an incentive to get involved. He often seems to be acting on his own, without a paying client, despite warnings from the police to stay away coupled with the obvious dangers. Hammett's continental op, in novels like The Dain Curse, at least had a paying client ordering him to snoop into the multi-layered mysteries, with significant insurance money at stake.

Ultimately, without giving away too much of the story, Chandler does a pretty good job of throwing a lot of balls in the air and wrapping up most of the loose ends by story's end. Some threads are left unresolved, like the whereabouts and motives of the mysterious doctor and psychic in Bay City, but most of the rest of the plot makes sense. LIke another reviewer said, at the end of the novel, while you may have enjoyed the ride, you are left with somewhat of an empty feeling.

As for the narration, I expected a little more from Mr. Gould, an accomplished stage and screen actor who seems to sleepwalk his way through the beginning of the book as if he was handed a copy of the novel, a microphone, and told to read. He later changes pace a little, adopting different voices for different characters, but I found the voices ill-suited to the characters and sometimes caricatures of policemen or gangsters, as if the novel was a scene from a "Bowery Boys" episode.

Raymond Chander's second novel is both more and less successful than his first. THE BIG SLEEP suffered from a plot that fell apart in midstream; FAREWELL, MY LOVELY, however, is much more consistent throughout. On the other hand, for all its twists and turns, THE BIG SLEEP was quite plausible; FAREWELL, MY LOVELY, however, is about as farfetched as you can get. But once again, such criticisms are almost beside the point: the great attraction is still Chandler's knock-you-flat prose, his tone of voice, his often imitated but seldom equaled style, and it is so powerful that it keeps you turning page after page after page.

In general, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY once more finds street-smart and super-savvy California P.I. Philip Marlowe sticking his nose where it has no business being--and when curiosity leads him to follow a massively built white man into a black nightclub he finds himself embroiled in a murder no one cares about solving... at least not until it begins to figure in what seems to be a completely different case with a high-society spin. And encounters with stolen jewels, a spiritualist racket, police corruption, and a gambling ship quickly follow.

Along the way Chandler again paints a gritty portrait of the seamy side of life. On this occasion, he takes a passing look at race, and makes the point that from a police point of view two standards apply: the authorities care nothing about the murder of a black man, but they treat a white man's murder very differently indeed. This portion of the novel is intrinsically controversial, for Chandler uses the slang and racial slurs common to the mean streets of his era--but it is worth noting that although Marlowe uses the same language, his attitude toward the blacks who appear in the novel is considerably different from that of the authorities, who could not care less about the murder of a black man who don't much care who knows it. And once again, Chandler graces his pages with dames and dandies, broads and bums--and he makes them live with remarkable vitality. The famous prose is as rich as ever, although noticeably less witty and quite a bit darker than that found in THE BIG SLEEP. We've stepped off the curb and into the gutter, Chandler seems to be saying, and we're walking in it all the way. Impressive stuff and a very entertaining read.

"Farewell, My Lovely" is such an amazing book. From the first page, this novel does what all Chandler books do-- transports you to a whole 'nother world, so real it feels like you're actually there. FML is such an awe-inspiring accomplishment for the immensely talented man of letters, Raymond Chandler. Most of the time I was absolutely floored, just sitting there with my mouth wide open, marvelling at his genius. Writing is hardly ever this good, and when it is, the great stuff usually isn't the abundance of the book (as RC's is), rather, it's in little snippets here and there. There must be a God, because Chandler's writing makes me realize the potential of us humans to transcend the ordinary and be what he is-- extraordinary. Not to mention that the mystery will have you guessing all the way through, and even without the cynical prose (yes, I said prose) which manages to be beautifully ugly and positively negative at the same time (I told you he was a genius), is excellent in of itself. So, I urge every person who hasn't yet done so to read Raymond Chandler. He is not just a mystery writer (which usually means sub-standard literature) but he totally, without a doubt, transcended the genre. I guarantee his writing will blow you away. His clever, cheeky remarks, his sarcasm, his minimalistic prose, his cynical outlook, the dames, the coppers, the criminals-- that and more is what you can look forward to in this masterpiece of the English language.