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. While the mystery is well plotted, Black elevates it beyond mere thoughtful homage with a plausible injection of emotion in his wounded lead.

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. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest families and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.Only Benjamin Black, a modern master of the genre, could write a new Philip Marlowe novel that has all the panache and charm of the originals while delivering a story that is as sharp and fresh as today's best crime fiction.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.

Marlowe sets off on his search, but almost immediately discovers that Peterson's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Then a new client is shown in: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. It is the early 1950s, Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Channeling Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Black has brought Marlowe back to life for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, California. Traffic trickled by in the street below, and there were a few pedestrians, too, men in hats going nowhere.'So begins 'The Black-Eyed Blonde,' a new novel featuring Philip Marlowe-yes, that Philip Marlowe. The telephone on my desk had the look of something that knows it's being watched. Raymond Chandler's incomparable private eye is back, pulled by a seductive young heiress into the most difficult and dangerous case of his career'It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving.

The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black