Frank MacShane (1927–1999)

I have been a bit befuddled by Chandler, finding his novels underwhelming. Reading his biography I am still befuddled by him; the biography hits home that he a literary genius and the best thing that ever happened to the mystery genre, making me feel like I should respect his work more but I still can't make the leap. But the biography brings to life a somewhat interesting person who created a larger-than-life detective, but for much of his life he was a miserable bastard and really bottomed show more out when his wife died, becoming infatuated with a string of women and eventually getting involved with a divorced Australian woman and paying her bills while he couldn't stand her. I suppose it is possible to be a literary genius with arch, penetrating takes on American life and also a dimwit in one's personal life, but it also makes me think if maybe his literary reputation is a bit overblown. show less

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 One is by Chandler himself, previously unpublished.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, show more 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. show less

Some of the stories come close to approximating Chandler's prose, but a few stick out for excessive profanity (which I don't object to, it is just that in Chandler's prose profanity was rare and always redacted) and over-the-top action. I am getting pretty sick of Marlowe to be honest.

A short story collection of Philip Marlowe pastiches. As you might expect, they are of uneven quality and even the one story by Raymond Chandler isn’t one of his best. The stories are arranged by the years in which they are supposed to occur from the 30s to the 50s. One of the better stories is, in fact, the first one from 1935, “The Perfect Crime,” by Max Allan Collins based on the death of actress Thelma Todd. It is easy to parody the Chandler stories and more than a few of them come show more off as over-ripe but it is an interesting collection and worth reading. show less