![]() ![]() Accessibility help Skip to navigation Skip to content Skip to footer. Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Literary Agency (U.K.). The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel, by Benjamin Black, Mantle, RRP£16.99/Henry Holt & Co, RRP27, 320 pages. We both ordered coffees and began to talk about the narrator in question: Philip Marlowe. While the mystery is well plotted, Black elevates it beyond mere thoughtful homage with a plausible injection of emotion in his wounded lead. In his new novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde ( Henry Holt ), he has the narrator grouse about the phony Irish pubs of Los Angeles, but this hotel restaurant seemed sufficiently like a hotel restaurant in London to escape Banville’s condemnation. The case appears to wrap up quickly after Marlowe learns that Peterson was the victim of a hit-and-run, but Cavendish has some major revelations in store. ![]() When Marlowe shakes hands with someone, “It was like being given a sleek, cool-skinned animal to hold for a moment or two.” The title character, Clare Cavendish, wanders into Marlowe’s office to ask him to trace her lover, Nico Peterson, who disappeared two months earlier. ![]() As for the language, Black nails Chandler’s creative and memorable similes and metaphors. Parker’s lengthy experience in the PI genre, his sequel to The Big Sleep, Perchance to Dream, pales in comparison with Black’s pitch-perfect recreation of the character and his time and place. Black (the pseudonym that John Banville uses for his crime fiction) isn’t the first to tackle the daunting challenge of recreating the distinctive narrative voice of Raymond Chandler’s world-weary, mean streets–walking L.A. ![]()
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