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$50 · Offered by Book Collector Inc

Author: Chandler, Raymond Thornton (1888-1959) Year: 1958 Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Place: London Description: 208 pages. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5 1/4") bound in original red with silver lettering to spine. (Bruccoli xv-1) First edition preceding the American edition. This novel puts Marlowe in the position of turning against his client. We are at the beginning of 1952 (some 18 months after the parting of Marlowe and Linda Loring in The Long Goodbye). An unknown client hires Marlowe (via intermediaries) to follow a woman traveling under the name Eleanor King (whose real name is Betty Mayfield). Marlowe traces Mayfield to the small coastal resort town of Esmeralda in California, where he is given the runaround by practically everyone. During her train ride west, Mayfield was recognized by a man who then seeks to blackmail her, for reasons disclosed at the end of the novel. While Marlowe is poking around Esmeralda, the blackmailer is found dead on Mayfield's hotel room balcony. She panics and calls Marlowe for help. Marlowe encounters a variety of characters with dubious motivations, including a taciturn lawyer and his smart secretary (with whom Marlowe had a sexual encounter), a 'retired' gangster, overconfident would-be tough guys of varying morals, a hired killer (whose wrists Marlowe smashes), decent police officers, an affectingly desperate example of the American immigrant underclass of the 1950s. Marlowe also had a striking encounter in a hotel lobby with a reflective e

• Binding: Hardcover

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