Reading a Raymond Chandler novel is probably like taking a ride along the coast to Montecito on a warm evening in 1950, in a convertible with your best girl riding shotgun. The sweet smell of the ocean blowing through her hair, and the the smile she flashes back at you every time you look it her, telling you she wouldn't rather be anywhere else, or with anyone else. "The Long Goodbye" has it all. Superb novel. ( )

I guess the vernacular ages faster than more formal speech. The dialogue here sometimes seems like it is making fun of itself, but probably not. Especially interesting are:

Names are dropped about whom the modern reader is likely to be ignorant, e.g. Frank Merriwell and Walter Bagehot.
Long gone expressions that we now mostly know from books like this one, or the movies include: People may be a chum or a heel. You might be all wet or sore as hell [i.e. angry]. Fifty cents is called four bits. The wealthy are either the upper crust or the carriage trade. The author says of a character that She hadn't worn a hat. Would you comment that a woman wasn't wearing a hat today? The backtalk of the gangsters can be very amusing, And the next time you crack wise, be missing. Bad language like the hell with you has been almost completely replaced in modern times by a greater obscenity. The author and his genre are noted for the short odd simile. This can be successful, but it can get out of hand as in It would have depressed a laughing jackass and made it coo like a mourning dove.
There are some expressions whose meaning is clear, but that I don't recall ever hearing like He must have made plenty of the folding. so that one wonders if the author made this up. And inevitably there are some expressions that I really can't understand, e.g. some people you're a wrong gee.
=====================
By the way, the 1973 movie The Long Goodbye that revived Elliot Gould's career has made considerable plot changes. That, along with using Gould as Philip Marlowe, means that you can read the book even if you've seen the movie for a much different experience. ( )

I thought I had already read this so when I got my dad's paperback copy, I didn't read it right away. Well, it turns out I hadn't read it & now I am sorry I let it sit on the shelf so long! Chandler managed to surprise me with twists right up to the end. And unlike some of his earlier works, there was very little objectionable language (i.e. little to no racial slurs, etc.). ( )

First edition near fine no jacket

First US edition good