Join us for our next discussion date for “Crime Scene”!

A selection of the suggested titles will be available to borrow A Month or so before Each meeting. Please ask at the circulation desk.

Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is an iconic Los Angeles private detective of hard-boiled noir crime novels. Emerging from the same pulp magazines that created Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade in the 1920’s and 30’s, Marlowe is a wisecracking, hard-drinking, tough private eye who is also quietly contemplative, philosophical and enjoys chess and poetry. While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is also not fooled by the genre’s usual femmes fatales.

Chandler completed seven novels in the series between 1939 and 1958. While reading the series in order might provide some insights into the character’s growth, each book is a standalone story and they can be read in any order. The Big Sleep (#1) was the basis of the classic 1946 noir film of the same name featuring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, while The Long Goodbye (#6) and Farewell, My Lovely (#2) were both adapted to film in the 1970’s (starring Elliot Gould and Robert Mitchum, respectively, as Marlowe), and are the highest rated books of the series on Goodreads.