the black eyed blonde a philip marlowe novel

novelist John Banville) has revived Chandler's legendary PI Philip Marlowe in a new adventure that reads almost as well as the real thing. Imitations always run the risk of coming off as a bad parody - like, say, that last sentence.

* Daily Telegraph * Raymond Chandler could write some mean prose, the kind that hits like a highball and can knock you off your feet even when you're sitting down. that this novel is so enjoyable is a testament to the effectiveness of the formula that Chandler laboured so hard to perfect. The plot is dead right, and the voice is spot on too. And although the avowed model for Banville/Black's crime fiction is Simenon, there is a great deal of Marlowe in his lonely, quixotic protagonist Quirke. Like Chandler, Banville sweats over his sentences. * Scotland on Sunday * When I heard that Benjamin Black, aka the Man Booker-winner John Banville, had taken on the job, I felt the Chandler estate had plumped for the right man. Perhaps Chandler could have written a better Marlowe novel, but I can't think of anyone else who could. It takes a brilliant writer to make such an unreal character real: Chandler was and Banville is. But this one is the real deal, as sweet and bitter as the perfectly mixed gimlet. More, please' * Evening Standard * You might well be suspicious of the current trend for posthumous piggy-backing and I wouldn't blame you. Black ticks all the boxes - a man with a gun in his hand comes through the door more than once - and the set-pieces, which include an interview with a starlet on a back-lot and a visit to a creepy, swanky country club staffed by oddballs, are magnificent. * Observer * 'Benjamin Black, author of the Quirke series of crime novels set in Dublin in the Fifties - aka Man Booker Prize-winning John Banville - reveals a knack for channelling the grand master of noir.

An exceptionally effective act of literary ventriloquism and entirely irresistible. Banville/Black clearly loves writing this and the fun he's having - his affection for Chandler's world - shines through.

Best of all, though, he conjures the world-weary loneliness of Chandler's creation, a character who, in just seven novels, the world saw far too little of. Banville has largely perfected Chandler's much-mimicked, seldom-bettered knack for similes and one-liners. * New Statesman * Banville lets us know from the very start of The Black-Eyed Blonde that we are in the safest of hands here. Chandler was a metaphorical rogue trader Banville is a class act. Banville is simply a more elegant writer. If anything, oddly, the book is probably better than an actual Chandler: more coherent, and more consistent, more careful.

The black eyed blonde a philip marlowe novel