On waking, he meets spunky Anne Riordan – “the kind of girl Marlowe would have married if he had been the marrying kind,” Chandler said.1 Having found Marriott’s body, she holds Marlowe at gunpoint, until he persuades her to search the body with him: they find marijuana “jujus” that Marlowe withholds when he reports back to the efficient Lt. The two drive to the rendezvous, but no one appears when Marlowe investigates, he is sapped. Nulty.Ī second plot line begins when effete Lindsay Marriott calls with a job: Marlowe is to pay an $8,000 ransom for a jade necklace. From a hotel clerk he learns that Florian’s widow Jesse is alive, and from her he gleans an old photo of Velma. Nulty gets the case and persuades the detective to do his footwork. When the bouncer tries to throw him out, Malloy kills him and maims the owner, and Marlowe is a witness. This was Chandler’s favorite novel, and many critics think it his best.įoremost among the grotesques is Moose Malloy, a giant, lovelorn gangster whom Marlowe meets outside Florian’s, a now-Negro bar where Malloy seeks his old flame, Velma. The plot may be disjointed but the theme is sure. Chandler’s second novel also features one of the richest troves of grotesque characters in American literature. Farewell, My Lovely (1940) is famous for its metaphors.
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