Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye: A BBC Full-Cast Radio Drama Starring Toby Stephens: Amazon.ca: Raymond Chandler, Broadcasting Corp. British, Full Cast: Books

Product Description

From Library Journal

Chandler is not only the best writer of hardboiled PI stories, he's one of the 20th century's top scribes, period. His full canon of novels and short stories is reprinted in trade paper featuring uniform covers in Black Lizard's signature style. A handsome set for a reasonable price.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"Raymond Chandler is a master." --The New York Times

“[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered.” --The New Yorker

“Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious.” --Robert B. Parker, The New York Times Book Review

“Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye.” --Los Angeles Times

“Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist.” —The Boston Book Review

“Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler’s prose. . . . He wrote like an angel.” --Literary Review

“[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision.” --Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.” —Ross Macdonald

“Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude.” --Erle Stanley Gardner

“Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.” --Paul Auster

“[Chandler]’s the perfect novelist for our times. He takes us into a different world, a world that’s like ours, but isn’t. ” --Carolyn See

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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First Sentence
The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

34 Reviews

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (34 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Arguably Raymond Chandler's best novel., July 1 2004

By

Michael G. "mikefromrochester" (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Long Goodbye (Paperback)

The Long Goodbye is a novel with lots of meat on its bones. The plot is engaging and complex, the characters are all extremely colorful, the dialogue is superb and the descriptive passages are in a league of their own. Chandler also provides us with an abundance of social commentary while exploring a number of important themes.
One of these themes is the nature of friendship. At the start of the book, Philip Marlowe, a well established literary character notorious for being a cynical loner, finds a friend. The friend's name is Terry Lennox and he's what could be described as a lovable lush. When Terry confesses to committing a brutal crime, Marlowe is unable to believe his friend could ever be capable of such a thing and, against all odds, looks to vindicate him.
Along the way, Marlowe meets Eileen and Roger Wade, an unhappily married couple who belong to roughly the same privileged social circle as Terry. A fabulously successful writer of romance novels, Roger is also a tormented alcoholic. A good deal of the book is concerned with examining the Wades' dysfunctional marriage.
This is a wonderful book, full of insight and bursting with humanity. It is a marvelous showcase for Raymond Chandler at the height of his literary powers. Highly recommended.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Complex noir book by genre master, Jan 16 2004

By

Jay Stevens (Missoula, MT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Long Goodbye (Paperback)

"The Long Goodbye" is unlike most of Chandler's other novels. It's longer. It's loaded with more description, internal life, and character investigation. Its plot -- though seeming more random -- is actually tighter and more pointed than his earlier work. In some ways it's more ambituous and revealing than his other work. In other ways, it contradicts his earlier writing style. But no matter how you look at it...it's awesome.

There are a couple of things I've always admired in Chandler.

First, he conveys everything in scene. After an obligatory physical description, everybody is characterized through dialog or action. As a result, the plot flies by, and we are treated to a very concrete, participatory read.

Second, Philip Marlowe tells us almost nothing about himself or his background or even what he's thinking, but we know him better than we know ourselves, thanks to the gritty voice, the nature of his observations, and the conclusions he makes about his world.

"Goodbye" does these things, but slides more towards self-introspection. There are lengthy passages where Marlowe spends time by himself. These passages could seem awkward to the die-hard hardboiled detective fan, but they work. They also show Chandler's writing ability.

In "Goodbye," a writer of popular novels plays a prominent role. Roger Wade writes romance best-sellers; he despises his own genre novels and aspires to write more literary fiction. As a reader of "Goodbye," it's easy to see the paralells between Wade and Chandler, and "Goodbye" seems to be an attempt to write something "literary."

But based on the success of "Goodbye" on its literary merits, it's evident that Chandler wrote the hardboiled dectective novels because he wanted to; not because he couldn't do anything else.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Philip Marlowe . . and 'all my children.', Aug 19 2003

By

Larry Scantlebury (Ypsilanti, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Long Goodbye (Paperback)

Certainly The Long Goodbye is one of the top ten mysteries written, maybe even the top three. It has that tremendous yet subtle notion of pathos, loyalty, the purity of truth, (perhaps uniqely American) 'stick-to-it-iveness' or relentlessness, and a gritty, scarred, hero.

And certainly Marlowe is the father of a whole bunch of bastard children. Spenser, the oldest, his brother Dave Robicheaux, the darker cousins Lucas (Davenport) and no, not Elvis but Joe Pike.

Juxtapose that against the beauty and insight of Chandler's writing, his voice resonating with the truth about, say relationships. He writes about the war-hero, shattered after the trauma of death, through the words of his wife: "I love my husband. Not as a young girl. That's passed. That man I loved then died in the war. But I love him."

The names and notions intertwine. Marlowe's loyalty to Terry Lennox is the stuff of The Knights of the Realm. The women are tough and knowledgeable. The time is past. Or is it?

Top shelf writing from a man who wrote little but said a lot.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Marlowe enters a new era
The 1950's saw the end of Hollywood's classic noir period, but in writing "The Long Goodbye," Chandler asserted that his Los Angeles private eye and eternal cynic Philip... Read more

Published on Feb 28 2003 by A.J.

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Chandler's Best
I enjoy Chandler's prose as much as the next person but the colorful descriptives and tough-guy dialog can sometimes start to wear after a few hundred pages. Read more

Published on Dec 26 2002 by g4cube

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific
Twenty years after I read it the first time, I still hold the same conclusion: The Long Goodbye really might be THE Great American Novel. Period. Read more

Published on Dec 26 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars Cynicism without becoming parody (unlike this review).
Suppose life begins to look like it is being viewed through the bottom of a shot glass. The people you see are only marking time until the next powerplay, drink, or fix, or... Read more

Published on Oct 15 2002 by desefinado

4.0 out of 5 stars The Long Goodbye
Compulsively readable.

With the grim inevitability of Robert Bloch's Psycho (ie. a chain of death that looks as if it may not stop), and the wry social commentary of a newer gem... Read more

Published on July 9 2002 by sleeping sheepsnake

5.0 out of 5 stars Marlowe is far beyond being cool...
Chandler is the ultimate dialogue writer and he has a truly impressive grasp of human behaviour.

Through Marlowe's cynical but honest look, he creates the most lovable... Read more

Published on May 23 2002 by S. Ozerturk

4.0 out of 5 stars Farewell, My Lovely
As detective fiction goes, Chandler's novel is as good as it gets. His protagonist is the charmingly frank Philip Marlowe ("It wasn't any of my business. So I ...looked in. Read more

Published on Mar 3 2002 by Ashley

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome, Again!
My second Raymond Chandler novel has elevated my opinion of him even higher than I thought possible. Chandler is an absolute master of the noir genre. Read more

Published on Jan 14 2002 by Jeffrey Leach

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece!!
One of Chandler's best. Long, but worth the work. You'll get to know a little more about Marlowe, even if you feel like you know him already...

Published on Jun 5 2001 by mellyduck

5.0 out of 5 stars The price of kindness
At the beginning of this book, Marlowe's still got a heart left in him and he helps a drunk dumped by a beautiful woman get home. Read more

Published on Jan 8 2001 by frumiousb