Chandler makes Marlowe human in ‘Farewell, My Lovely’ (1940)

Having taken the baton from Dashiell Hammett for his first Philip Marlowe novel, “The Big Sleep” (1939), Raymond Chandler works on making his hardboiled private eye a more flawed and realistic character in “Farewell, My Lovely” (1940).

The softer side of the hardboiled sleuth

As I did with the first novel, I pictured a softer Marlowe than the definitively hardboiled Humphrey Bogart in the “Big Sleep” movie — perhaps someone more like Dick Powell’s version in the “Farewell, My Lovely” adaptation “Murder, My Sweet” (1944), which I’m looking forward to watching.

The Los Angeles P.I. remains witty, via Chandler’s metaphors and similes in the detective’s mind, plus spoken dialog. They are cliches today, but are still so much fun to read, such as this description of Mrs. Grayle from chapter 18: “Her hair was of the gold of old paintings and had been fussed with just enough but not too much. She had a full set of curves which nobody had been able to improve on.” In a later scene, Marlowe says, “She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”

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“The Naked Gun” (1988) was not subtle in borrowing from this novel, as heard in Frank Drebin’s voiceover when meeting Jane: “Her hair was the color of gold in old paintings. She had a full set of curves and the kind of legs you’d like to suck on for a day. She was giving me a look I could feel in my hip pocket.”

Marlowe is ultimately cool in how he gets into and out of situations, but “Farewell” makes sure to show that he’s far from cool on the inside. Although it would be going too far to call Marlowe a Sad Sack – in the manner of the observant but beat-down protagonists of Philip K. Dick’s novels – he is more on the depressive side in this second novel.

Partly, this is because of the bad things that happen to him – including a wild stretch where he’s beaten by corrupt cops in neighboring Bay City and deposited in a corrupt drug-addiction center where he’s drugged up with the intent of being kept out of play. He gets out of this jam by doing hardboiled hero stuff, but the author makes sure to note the toll whereas other scribes might be content to create a near-superhero.

Man, not superman

Marlowe finally returns to his apartment, his sanctuary where he can be human. “I took my shoes off and walked around in my socks feeling the floor with my toes,” Chandler writes to close chapter 38. “They would still get numb again once in a while.”

When Marlowe enters an offshore gambling ship outside of any jurisdiction, he admits to new colleague Red that he’s scared. Indeed, although Marlowe claims he has no friends when the subject of friends comes up, we see that he admires this ex-cop, who takes him to the ship in exchange for a reasonable fare. He finds Red to be a nice guy, and that leads his mind to reflect on the relative decency or indecency of the players in this case.

Marlowe himself shows decency. Notably, the trophy wife of rich old man – Mrs. Grayle, “a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window” (chapter 13) — pursues him, and he somewhat gives in but then feels awful when the husband enters the room and isn’t even bothered by what’s going on.

The detective reflects on how the predictable irrationality of love factors into many people’s behavior. (Marlowe himself perhaps is on a path to love with Anne Riordan, who would make a neat sidekick if carried into future novels, but she’s rarely foremost in his mind and is oddly underused in “Farewell.”)

In an even more esoteric bit of armchair philosophizing, Marlowe observes a bug on an upper floor of the police HQ, and wonders if the insect climbed all that way just to become his friend. These are the elements that made critics elevate Chandler’s work to “literary fiction” rather than mere “genre fiction.”

Sneakily traditional, under the surface

(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)

There’s a sort of trickery to this. Beneath the wonderful stylization, Chandler actually uses golden-age mystery elements in “Farewell,” including the murderer’s suicide, which allows the plot to be tidily wrapped up. Granted, a golden-age novel would’ve left it at that, but Chandler gives the addendum that she likely would’ve gotten away with the crimes legally due to being a sympathetic defendant.

(END OF SPOILERS.)

While some golden-age mystery traditions are upheld under the surface, “Farewell” – like “The Big Sleep” – doesn’t need to have a great mystery in order to be a great novel. Again we have a situation where Marlowe is hired – a man wants the P.I. on hand as protection in a handoff of cash for ransomed jewelry – and that little mission goes sideways and leads to a bigger puzzle.

The way Marlowe’s other mystery of the moment – the location of the missing Velma, an ex-girlfriend of a big man named Moose Malloy – ties in with the jewelry ransom thread is so convenient I wonder if there’s any connection at all, beyond Chandler telling me they are connected.

Yet I’m OK with it, because the world is full of randomness and coincidences, and “Farewell” drives home its realism on every page. A particularly stark location is a slum that’s home to an alcoholic woman who might have information, but Marlowe has to ply her with booze or threats or sneakiness to get that info. Some elements of the 1940s might be tough for modern readers, like Marlowe’s casual understanding that Malloy’s murder of a black citizen won’t bother the police too much.

The eras of Doyle and Christie had their rainy London and foggy moors, and Chandler – of both British and American lineage — brings us to sunny Los Angeles. But in “Farewell, My Lovely,” it’s only sunny on the outside.

Sleuthing Sunday reviews the works of Agatha Christie, along with other new and old classics of the mystery genre.