Raymond Chandler’s incomparable private eye is back, pulled by a seductive young heiress into the most difficult and dangerous case of his career “It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving. The telephone on my desk had the look of something that knows it’s being watched. Traffic trickled by in the street below, and there were a few … there were a few pedestrians, too, men in hats going nowhere.”
So begins The Black-Eyed Blonde, a new novel featuring Philip Marlowe–yes, that Philip Marlowe. Channeling Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Black has brought Marlowe back to life for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, California. It is the early 1950s, Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client is shown in: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. Marlowe sets off on his search, but almost immediately discovers that Peterson’s disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City’s richest families and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.
Only Benjamin Black, a modern master of the genre, could write a new Philip Marlowe detective novel that has all the panache and charm of the originals while delivering a story that is as sharp and fresh as today’s best crime fiction.
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If you love Raymond Chandler’s writing (“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”), give Benjamin Black/John Banville a try. He’s brought back world-weary P.I. Philip Marlowe with bravura and similes galore. A tightly plotted mystery to savor.
A private detective named “Philip Marlowe” is hired by Clare Cavendish, the wealthy daughter of perfume magnate Dorothea Langrishe, to find a man named Nico Peterson. Clare, the beautiful blonde of the title with whom “Marlowe” is almost instantly smitten, gives the impression that she and Peterson were lovers. Although married, she says she and her husband have an arrangement—which is to say an open marriage. “Marlowe’s” investigation reveals that Peterson is dead, the victim of an automobile accident. Clare admits she knows that, then tells him she spotted Peterson, alive and well, in San Francisco, and wants “Marlowe” to find him.
As events progress, “Marlowe” is set upon by a couple of Mexican thugs; threatened by a local crime boss who wants a certain item recovered; tortured by the “butler” of the exclusive Cahuilla Club at the behest of the club’s owner, who has a vested interest in the investigation; and is ultimately no more surprised than I was by the “surprise” revelation that’s a major part of the story’s solution. I said to myself at the beginning of Chapter 23 (of 25 chapters) that if a certain party was revealed to be involved in or behind all of this, as I’d come to suspect, I’d be seriously irritated. Irritation became fury when my suspicion proved correct.
If you’re wondering why, in the preceding paragraphs, I bracketed Marlowe’s name with quotation marks, it’s because the pallid, pathetic excuse in this disaster of a novel has as much in common with Raymond Chandler’s character and style as Mickey Spillane’s has with Jane Austen’s. If ever there were a cautionary tale about the inadvisability of major publishers signing first- and second-tier mystery writers to continue series about classic characters by esteemed authors, THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE is it.
Begin with the admission that I started this novel with a couple of biases and a great deal of skepticism. A hardcore Raymond Chandler fan since I first discovered him in my early teens some roughly 57 years ago, he’s the author of my favorite novel, independent of genre, THE LONG GOODBYE. (Although I might rate HUCKLEBERRY FINN and THE SOUND AND THE FURY somewhat above it in the “Significant Literature” category, I’ve only read those three times each, so far, whereas I’ve read THE LONG GOODBYE six times—so far.) Why does one read—and re-read—Raymond Chandler? Definitely not for plot—and by Chandler’s own admission, plot was far less important to him than were character and style.
Benjamin Black, pseudonym for acclaimed Irish author John Banville, isn’t even close to Chandler, his own arguments notwithstanding as far as I’m concerned (Book Bub’s terms of service won’t allow the link) Serious, big-time, major-league spoiler alert: unless and until you’ve read THE BIG SLEEP and—above all—Chandler’s masterwork, THE LONG GOODBYE, avoid this lame excuse for a “Philip Marlowe” novel. Banville gives away some key information about THE BIG SLEEP, and utterly and unconscionably ruins THE LONG GOODBYE by revealing most of its key points.
Moreover, he gets a number of things absolutely wrong. Marlowe, despite once having been an investigator for the D.A.’s office, is renowned for not getting along with many cops. But among the few relatively close friends he’s ever acknowledged is Bernie Ohls, chief investigator for the District Attorney at the time of THE BIG SLEEP and Assistant Chief of Homicide in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office in THE LONG GOODBYE. In THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE, Banville makes their relationship completely adversarial while having “Marlowe” get along more cooperatively with Sergeant Green than his actual counterpart did or probably would have in THE LONG GOODBYE. Another mistake Banville makes with regard to the latter novel is that Sylvia Lennox is beaten to death and that a bullet is found in her skull. Beaten to death, yes; skull shot, no.
As you may have noticed in the third paragraph, I’m more than a little peeved, to put it charitably, by major publishers who try to cash in on long-established authors and their series. For instance—and I’m sure I’ll be branded a heretic by his legion of Spenser-series fans—the grossly overrated Robert B. Parker was commissioned by Putnam to create the Chandler cash-ins POODLE SPRINGS and PERCHANCE TO DREAM, which rank high in my Oh, Puh-leeze! Are You Kidding Department.
Argue though some might, I think Chandler’s style was among the most influential of Twentieth Century American authors. He had (and probably still has) many an imitator, particularly among those writing hardboiled detective stories, and at least one esteemed parodist, S.J. Perelman, who wrote the memorable “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer.” When it comes to Chandler’s more outright stylistic imitators, look to Howard Browne writing as John Evans in his Paul Pine series of mysteries, to Roy Huggins’s THE DOUBLE TAKE, and especially to Keith Laumer’s DEADFALL, the single finest pseudo-Chandler novel (and homage—it’s dedicated to Chandler and Marlowe) I’ve ever come across. The hero, private eye Joe Shaw, was more than likely named for the esteemed editor of the famed BLACK MASK magazine where Chandler’s work debuted. I’ve maintained for ages that if you were to give a copy of Laumer’s novel with its author’s name deleted and claimed it was a previously undiscovered Chandler, the latter’s most devoted fans would, based on both style and substance, believe the falsehood.
I seriously have to question how much of Chandler’s work Olen Steinhauer, who reviewed this novel for *The New York Times*, has actually read, let alone absorbed. Those who have read and absorbed both can make their own determinations. As far as I’m concerned, both publisher Henry Holt and Company and John Banville, independent of the hair-coloring of each, rate black eyes for THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE, an eminently and deservedly forgettable example of corporate whoring which should never have come to light in the first place. May there never be a follow-up!
© 2017 Barry Ergang
I was determined to enjoy this from the moment I heard about it.
John Banville has been my favourite living writer since the 80’s, when my reading diet was almost completely restricted to an Irish menu, and before I got the noir bug. Then, when I converted to noir as an eager disciple, Chandler was my first Master.
So, when Banville felt the need to scratch the itch of thrills and spills through his new Benjamin Black persona, and then got the nod for a new Marlowe, I knew hatches would be battened in advance of a perfect storm of murder, mayhem, a double-dealing dame and a wise-cracking gumshoe.
A beautiful client, Clare Cavendish, rich and mysterious, a missing link, to be found dead or alive, the flatfoot cop to be manipulated and avoided. Even a Sydney Greenstreet character and an Elisha Cook Jnr. (and a nice touch, a reference to Aidan Higgins’ ‘Langrishe, Go Down).
“I turned to go, then stopped. How beautiful she was, standing in the sun in her cool white linen, with all that shining glass and candy-pink stone behind her. I could still feel the softness of her mouth on mine. “Tell me,” I said, “how did you hear about Peterson’s death?”
“Oh,” she said, perfectly casual, “I was there when it happened.”
I started it with the frame of mind that this was the original Chandler, with Banville skulking in an anonymous background. After a while, and it wasn’t long, I dispensed with the illusion. Only one Chandler, and only one Banville, so I was happy to change tracks and jump on the Banville express to Bay City and the Ritz-Beverly. Like Marlowe says:
“I had the phone in my hand and was dialing her number before I knew what I was doing. There are times when you find yourself following your instincts like a well-trained dog trotting behind the heels of its master.”
I expected Chandler but got Banville – not a bad deal for this well-trained Banville dog.
Chandler said, “Mystery and the solution of the mystery are only what I call ‘the olive in the Martini’. The really good mystery is one you would read even if you knew somebody had torn out the last chapter.”
The Black Eyed Blonde fits that bill: worth reading even if the last chapter doesn’t explode into a pyrotechnic rapture of Marlowe redemption.
Banville is, I believe, a Wexford man. Raymond Chandler’s people were from the neighbouring county, Waterford, and the young Raymond, apparently spent many’s a happy day of his childhood wandering the streets of Waterford City.
If Banville/Black is to mix the Marlowe Martini again, maybe he will revisit a plotline that Chandler was considering shortly before his death, as confided to a Waterford writer who became Chandler’s neighbour in London in the late 50’s:
“The Waterford writer, Bill Long, made Chandler’s acquaintance in London in 1958 when they lived two doors apart in Chelsea.
… Crowds tired him and, often, he and Long would leave the party-goers and retire to Chandlers study where, invariably, Chandler wanted to talk about Waterford. He would ask Long to tell him about the Waterford of Long’s youth, forty years after Chandler had known it. Long said that Chandler would often take pencil and paper, and make lists of streets and squares and laneways of the old city, just as James Joyce did in recalling Dublin. Chandler often spoke about Power’s second-hand bookshop that he frequented in Waterford. This was the famous “Sticky Back” Power’s shop, known to several generations of Waterford people. Chandler startled Long, on one occasion when he was talking about “Sticky Back’s,” by saying that he had been thinking about the old bookshop and had come up with an idea for a new Philip Marlowe novel. He thought it would be a wonderful idea to use the shop, and the maze of streets and lanes surrounding it, as a setting for the novel. He outlined the plot: –
Marlowe is visiting Ireland and he stops in Waterford for a few days. He visits a bar on the quays in Waterford and there he witnesses a fight between sailors from different ships. The next day he hears that one of the sailors from the fight has been murdered and the body was found slumped in Sticky Back’s doorway. That evening Marlowe is recognized by the captain of the murdered sailor’s boat and is asked to investigate.”
I think Banville would make a beautiful martini from that mix, olive and all.