Näkemiin kaunokaiseni (1940)

Enjoyable, but not as good as The Big Sleep. The main mystery of the story just doesn't hold your interest in the same way, and the plot just feels muddled and confusing rather than mysterious. Chandler writes like nobody else, though, which is always a joy. ( )

Nearly gave this 5 stars. About half way through the book I thought 'After this book was written why did anyone bother to write any more crime books at all?'. It's got plot and clues and characters and places. It's got sight, smell, sound and touch, even some change of pace. And most of all it has the most brilliant stream of consciousness. It is written in the first person and in the past tense, but not as if telling what happened from the future - more as a running commentary - the still, small voice in the head slightly detached and describing or explaining the action to himself as it plays out. Terrific. Now got to find a whiskey sour and decide which film of the book to watch while it is fresh in my mind. ( )

Marlowe tumbling through the ultimately connected cases firing sharp quips rather than his gun and solving cases through cleverly getting the living daylights beaten out of him. Perfect. The sudden one person "dialogue" made my laugh out loud which is not something I usually do reading crime novels (except those really, really bad ones). ( )

Farewell five stars? Chandler's second novel, my third of his I read and my first non-5-star rating. I really liked his first novel, The Big Sleep and then found The Long Goodbye, published 14 years later, to be an excellent read and hardboiled social commentary. I was looking forward to Farewell, My Lovely and left not upset but not happy.

The hardboiled lingo he used so well in The Big Sleep was fleshed out with too many descriptive words in this book. It reminded me of advice I received in a writing class about how much description to use and how you should hit so many senses with each sentence. The crisp, rapid-fire pace of his other books, and the genre in general, is slowed down so much that it was a chore to read some sections. When Chandler dropped into dialogue mode, his touch returned, but the narrative never matched the pace of his characters talking to each other. While that was my bigger beef, I wasn't as interested in the plot line in this novel. It seemed forced, less believable and with too many two-dimensional characters.

If you want to read Chandler, start with The Long Goodbye. So far, that's been my favorite book of his and it earned a spot on my favorites bookshelf. ( )

Interesting plot and with the usual great lines. Philip is hired to be a tag-along on a pay-off, but the client ends of dead. ( )