The Long Goodbye

⚖The case for it

Chandler could never get a plot to sit down and behave, and this one drifts for a good stretch before it locates its purpose. Then the writing does something his earlier books only reached for. The lines slow down, Marlowe sounds worn thin, and a weariness settles over him that plays more like grief than fatigue. Gimlets, jokes that leave a mark, a city selling itself off parcel by parcel. You set the book aside thinking about a person rather than a case, which was Chandler's whole aim.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Chandler's plots never quite closed, and this one wanders for a hundred pages while Marlowe babysits a drunken novelist who is transparently Chandler complaining about himself. The women are schemers or saints, the period's casual bigotries are intact, and the Lennox twist asks more of your credulity than the elegy around it has earned.

— the honest librarian