Farewell, My Lovely: A Novel

By Raymond Chandler

The renowned novel from crime fiction master Raymond Chandler, with the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times), Philip Marlowe • Featuring the iconic character that inspired the film Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson.

Philip Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 11, 2002
• ISBN: 9781400030163

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was best known as the creator of fictional detective Philip Marlowe. One of the most influential American authors of crime novels and stories, his books were considered classics of the genre, and many of them were turned into enormously popular Hollywood films, including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye.

Reviews for Farewell, My Lovely

[margaretfield · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

exCon Moose hires Marlowe to find his lost girl friend

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

1940, hard boiled detective Philip Marlowe. A complex who dunnit with some pretty writing. It wasn't my favorite but it was entertaining.

[ahs7wolfy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The 2nd of Chandler's books to feature hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe has him involved in not just one but two murders. The first was a night club owner killed by a giant of a man aptly called Moose Malloy. It seems Moose was looking for the girl he left behind when he was put away for armed robbery 8 years ago and the owner didn't give him the answers he was looking for. As Moose had quite literally dragged Marlowe into the club he feels compelled to do a little digging of his own while Moose goes on the lam. The second killing was of a man who hired Marlowe as a bodyguard of sorts while he paid a ransom to get some rare jewellery back that had been boosted from a lady friend. Seeing as he didn't do such a good job at protecting his client Marlowe feels compelled to investigate that too even though the cops warn him off.It's been a few years since I read The Big Sleep and I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the main character and the pulp-noir feeling of this series. It was a welcome return as I really enjoyed how the story unfolded. Chandler has a way with words and draws the reader in to the seedy underbelly of big city life. There may be a proliferation of similes but when they're this good you don't really mind. As it was written in 1940 then there is the offensive racial terminology and views of the time to consider but if you can get past that then you're in for a treat. Equally as good, if not better, than its predecessor this comes thoroughly recommended.

[simonesimone_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hooked me young. Forever hooked.

[madepercy-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Raymond Chandler's work was recommended to me recently. I was reliably informed that Chandler's prose was "sharp". Some background reading suggested that Chandler's use of similes was brilliant. Both of these suggestions proved to be correct. The story, although not considered by some to be as good as The Big Sleep, was gripping. I kept imagining Bogart as Marlowe, but when he was too witty or too "gobby", Bogart didn't fit the bill. Marlowe's first person narration, in particular his witty and cynical inner monologue, stripped the Hollywood veneer and provided a richer depth of character, neatly humanised by sufficient and believable foibles. Usually, I pretend not to care whodunnit, but in this work the villain is revealed through Holmes-like deduction. What I like, though, is the way that the central theme, or maybe it is straight-forward social commentary, emerges long after the major climax. Thinking back to my high school English days, if you were to graph the plot, after the plot's major climax and anti-climax, there is a short but gradual rise to a separate thematic climax. This to me was unexpected but brilliant. The most annoying thing now is that Chandler has thrown me off my set reading list, and it saddens me to think that I do not have enough life left to read all that I would like to be able to read. But I did learn that you cannot overuse similes, provided they are brilliant. One can only hope.

[lady_lazarus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found the plot too confusing: because there were so many things going on and virtually nothing to tie them together, I lost interest. In the end these random things were of course tied together, but the writer gave no hints along the path on how this would happen. It just happened.The book was full of unnecessary description of every day life that had nothing to do with the plot. The discussions were mostly full of nonsense as well. In a way all this randomness and meaninglessness reminded me of life as everyone knows it. In general, there is no plot or logic or aim in real life and most of the discussion is just meaningless nonsense to fill the emptiness. I'm not sure though if I need to read about this in a book as my life is so full of it already.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great detective story that is the embodiment of the hardboiled detective genre.

[dasam-5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Worth reading as a good hard-boiled detective story and a bit Noir, despite the occasional racist or ugly language used by the characters.

[glennbell_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story is somewhat complex in the characters and relationships. Some information provided by characters are lies so it is confusing. The detective Marlowe is almost a super hero to cut through all the confusion and solve the crime. Also, he endures super human physical injury without being disabled or killed. The author uses interesting similes throughout the book, which adds an interesting twist. I am not much for crime novels, so I can not recommend this strongly.

[filoma-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this second book in the series. I listened to the audio format. The story was interesting and makes me think of 'noir' classic detective movies. Ray Porter, as the narrator, does a fantastic job. I found that he really brought Marlowe to life. I also thought that he did an ok job with the female voices. This is the type of story, with this narrator, that I could listen to a number of times. It is now certainly on my wish list to buy, since I've only listened to the library copy to date.

[black2lilly · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What a confusing and overly flowery story.The core is not too bad of an idea, but I had the feeling that Chandlertried to make this into a novella when it would have been better of asa short story. His overuse of flavour text was getting quite annoyingtowards the end and gave me a really hard time to even finish thisbook. A lot of the descriptions did not add to the atmosphere of thestory, on the contrary it distracted from what was going. The caseitself was solved within two pages at the end without much realsleuthing going on even though Marlow was running around like crazy,getting into trouble only to hear in the end that he knew more or lessall along who the culprit was. A very uninspired story all in all.

[franklyncee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book made me simultaneously obsessively curious about the 1940s, Los Angeles, noir, 1940s Los Angeles, Los Angeles noir...So much so I will probably move from this literary masterpiece to the video game L.A. Noire to stay immersed in the world. Read this book out loud for the sheer joy of it. It almost reads like a noir parody until you realize it's the original, the real deal. And for those of us who come to it after movies of the same ilk, it will be nearly impossible not to see or hear Humphrey Bogart as the protagonist.

[cjyurkanin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not for today's sensibilities and I'm not sure if it in any way reflects any sensibilities of the past, simply Chandler's. I was surprised to find it VERY VERY entertaining and will likely read some more Chandler in the future.

A few excerpts to illustrate the dead-blunt noir style:

She slapped my wrist. She said softly:
"What's your name?"
"Phil. What's yours?"
"Helen. Kiss me."
She fell softly across my lap and I bent down over her face and began to browse on it...

I giggled and socked him. I laid the coil spring on the side of his head and he stumbled forward. I followed him down to his knees. I hit him twice more. He made a moaning sound. I took the sap out of his limp hand. He whined.
I used my knee on his face. It hurt my knee. He didn't tell me whether it hurt his face...

I looked at the gun and it looked at me...

[pat_f. · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Smarter people than I might be able to poke holes in this one, but I can't. 5 stars, and this one goes on the Deserted Island list. Quite possibly a perfect novel--the descriptions, the dialog, the plot, and the twist, all wrapped up in a cynical, brilliant package. The best I've read in a very, very long time.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Raymond Chandler's writing remains the absolute best thing about this book. It lends a lot of character to Philip Marlowe who, in the hands of another writer, wouldn't be nearly so interesting. It's funny reading Chandler and realising that a lot of books I've read before were influenced by him. There's racism and misogyny and it's kind of like a time capsule from times and places I'll never see, but what I read it for is the writing style: the crisp images, the lack of cliche, the precise choice of words. Speaking synaesthetically, it tastes nice.

Somewhere in the middle I lost track of exactly what was happening and why, in between all the different parties and the (rightly) confused parts with Marlowe all drugged up and a bit incoherent. Anne Riordan isn't a bad woman or an unlikeable character, but she doesn't seem to have much point in the plot, either.

It's easy to read, even when you don't really get what's going on. It all comes straight in the end, more or less.

[alexbrightsmith-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't know why it took me so long to start to read this, maybe because the style has been so often and so easily parodied.
When I finally picked it up on the spur of a moment to kill some time on a journey, what I immediately found was that Chandler is the original and best to a breathtaking degree.
I couldn't tell you a thing about the plot, I was just absolutely blown away by the language. It's fresh and inventive in a way that could easily seem strained and artificial, but it's absolutely natural, and every new simile immediately understood.

[page.fault · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like the other Marlowe books, Farewell, My Lovely helped to shape a genre that still pervades American culture. This one has the template for the PI-female-journalist-type teamup, the lazy cop who gets said PI to do all the dirty work, and the insouciant, backtalking, oft-punched, hardboiled PI. It also has that indescribable sense of isolation and loneliness, that of a solitary man walking upright down the dark streets, that I have never really encountered outside of Chandler's works.

However, this has got to be one of the most racist, sexist, and homophobic books out there. We start with Phillip Marlowe entering a segregated bar reserved for African-Americans. The first African-American we meet is described as "it"--apparently he doesn't even get to have a male pronoun. We also have a totally racist description of a smelly, pigion-English speaking Native American and a set of incredibly homophobic descriptions of a "handsome" man--although since there are theories that Chandler himself leaned a bit that way, it may be a bit of a reaction.

What I hate most is that the first murder--that of an African American--apparently doesn't count at all. This is stated explicitly throughout the book, and it's not just a comment on society; Marlowe himself appears equally dismissive. It is horrifying to read of such dehumanizing racism being treated as commonplace.

It also has some of the most egregious bits of Marlowe's femme-fatale magnetism in the series:

"What's your name?"
"Phil."
"Kiss me."

etc.
Interestingly, despite the (as always) female villains, femme fatales, and damsels in distress, this may have the closest the series has to an intelligent, almost equal female character. Ann Riordan plays girl friday to Marlowe--an assisting role--but she is obviously both intelligent and coolheaded.

One of the reasons I like this one is that Marlowe is WAY more fallible than he was in Big Sleep. Oddly, he's apparently gotten handsomer--more people describe him as good-looking -- but he makes a bunch of idiotic mistakes, gets beaten up quite a bit, and gets hypnotized and given opium(?) and scopolamine, with amusing results.

Chandler's descriptions of both men and women are physical and sensual: he takes note of smoothness of skin, tapered and beautiful fingers, color of eyes, rounded lips, etc of both men and women, and the physical closeness even during a struggle. Although Chandler is virulently homophobic, there is some school of thought (including some of his contemporaries and friends) who considered him to be a repressed homosexual.

Some quotes that really make you wonder:

He held my gun in his delicate, lovely hand...He smiled, so beautifully....a
thin beautiful devil with my gun in his hand watching me and smiling.

His voice was soft, dreamy, so delicate for a big man that it was startling. It made me think of another soft-voiced big man I had strangely liked.

He had the eyes you never see, that you only read about. Violet eyes. Almost purple. Eyes like a girl, a lovely girl. His skin was soft as silk. Lightly reddened, but it would never tan. It was too delicate...I told him a great deal more than I intended to. It must have been his eyes.

Red leaned close to me and his breath tickled my ear...put his lips against my ear...took hold of my hand. His was strong, hard, warm and slightly sticky.

He was a dark, good-looking lad, with plenty of shoulders and shiny smooth hair and the peak on his rakish cap made a soft shadow over his eyes...His eyes gleamed like water...That put me about a foot from him. He had a nice breath.

He had a cat's smile, but I like cats...his eyes held a delicate menace...he had nice hands, not baby to the point of insipidity, but well-kept.


Marlowe is really not at all like Humphrey Bogart. Marlowe's appearance is hypermasculine--6ft, dark, large-framed, and either quite muscular or kind of chunky--he's 190 lb. He is also quite taciturn; most of the sarcastic comments happen inside his head...until, of course, he's given scopolamine, when he starts talking quite a bit. Does this hypermasculinity, the tough guy attitude that pervades Marlowe's every action, stem from a desire to create a character who is indubitably heterosexual?

Perhaps this is the depth that Chandler brings to the novel: the unique loneliness he creates, that every other noir story has tried and failed to capture, is not just the loneliness of a bruised, broken, tarnished, but still chivalric knight walking the mean streets. It is also the unvoiced isolation of a man who cannot fit into his culture, who must keep himself under tight control and never allow his passions and his desire for intimacy to surface.

Perhaps it also explains the virulent sexism of the novels. All of the books have a female villain, a character that Marlowe sees initially as a damsel in distress and tries to protect, but who ends up revealing herself as an amoral femme fatale who breaks and discards the men around her like used paper cups. There is always a sense of deep betrayal, a sense that Marlowe has been personally let down by the women around him. This very sharp sense of aggrievedness might stem from Chandler's own sense of betrayal by the women of his world: they have failed to be as desirable as his illicit desire for men.


The book also has some examples of Chandler's genius with language:


Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.

The room was as black as Carrie Nation's bonnet.

Darkness prowled slowly on the hills.

I used my knee on his face. It hurt my knee. He didn't tell me whether it hurt his face.


But the most intriguing question, to me at least: does the quintessentially "Hetero-He-Man" genre of detective noir owe its beginnings to the writings of a man struggling with his own homosexuality?

[marek2009_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought this was even better than 'The Big Sleep', although it perhaps deviates slightly from the classic formula, with odd excursions involving a fraudulent psychic, and a weird episode where Marlowe is 'doped' with heroin & thinks he's developed the DTs. It plot is complex but clear & ends with a fitting bang.

[krbrancolini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Farewell, My Lovely" is the second book in Raymond Chander's Philip Marlowe series. Published just a year after "The Big Sleep," this book features a more complex plot, which Chandler handles well for the most part. Unfortunately, the book abounds with red herrings and irrelevant subplots. Oddly, the 1976 movie with Robert Mitchum eliminated some of the subplots and minor characters, but added others -- while adding nothing to the clarity of the plot. True confession: I love books set in Los Angeles in the 1930s, and besides, it's classic Raymond Chanlder! Once again Marlowe reveals his spectacularly bad judgement in women. One of my favorite lines in the book addresses this in Chapter 29:Marlowe: "She's a nice girl. Not my type."Lt. Randall: "You don't like them nice?"Marlowe: "I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin." Of course, Marlowe and Chandler had a lot in common in this regard. This becomes clear in "The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved," which is an excellent portrait of Chandler and his complicated marriage to a women 18 years older than he was. I found my attention drifting sometimes, but Chandler's writing style kept me reading. The book is filled with a cast of unsympathetic character. As the bodies piled up, no one in the book seemed to care and I confess, I felt the same way. I was just lost in the language and descriptions. In describing a house where Marlowe is imprisoned and drugged for a time -- which turned out to be a quasi clinic and hideout for "hot boys" ('30s slang for fugitives) -- Chandler exactly captures the nastiness beneath the sparkling surface (Chapter 33):"There was a bed of winter sweet peas and a bronze-green humming bird podding in them delicately. The house looked like the home of a well-to-do elderly couple who like to garden. The late afternoon sun on it had a hushed and menacing stillness." As the novel nears its denoument, Chandler sets increasingly dark and dangerous scenes. There's a long drawn out scene on a gambling boat off-shore that went on and on, but I still wanted to know what happened. Honestly, with another author I would have been frustrated, but it's Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe. It's the journey not the destination.

[quickpint · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm a massive, enormous, gigantic Chandler fan, but after many re-reads of his book, I think this may be my least favourite. Oddly, it was the author's favourite, at least according to one interview. Terrific plot resolution at the end, but I don't know, something missing here for me... I just don't think the prose is as consistently good as in the other Marlowe novels. Sometimes, only once or twice, I think Chandler even tries a wisecrack and misses completely. Also the Shakespeare references, together with the Hemingway take-down, make him look a little insecure as a writer. Difficult second novel? Maybe. I'm not totally convinced by Marlowe's apparent reluctance to begin a happy relationship with Anne Riordan either. Still a better book than most crime writers have ever written.

[adithyajones · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent hardboiled,whodunit stuff, but what stands apart is Chandler's sharp descriptions of the characters and the environment.

[edgoldberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love the way Raymond Chandler writes but the story behind Farewell My Lovely is a tad convoluted. Marlowe is asked to accompany someone who is ransoming a jade necklace from its thieves. He winds up dead.He's also asked by Moose Malloy to help find Velma, a woman he's been in love with for the 8 years he was in jail. The intersection of these two stories is tenuous at best, but Chandler's description of his surroundings and the action is amazing. His characters are great. Marlowe is one heck of a detective and any story about him is worth reading, regardless of the story line. So, take the time to immerse yourself in the world according to Raymond Chandler.

[joybee_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another great Chandler book. This one, Chandler's second novel, had a fast paced, very deep and violent story. However, I did not find this as cynical as his first novel, it's still cynical, but I liked 'The Big Sleep' more because it was over the top cynical. This book has more of a plot driven story, which is very good, but I found hard to follow in the beginning. It starts out slow and somewhat confusing but everything ties together and makes a great page turner.Marlowe is present when a negro club owner is murdered by a behemoth man who just got out of prison and is looking for his old girlfriend. The lazy cop assigned to the case wants to pawn it off on Marlowe but Marlowe doesn't want it. Then Marlowe gets a job from a mysterious man trying to recover a lady friend's jewels that were taken during a hold up. This job leaves Marlowe knocked out and another man dead. As Marlowe tries to unravel the mystery he meets, racketeers, dirty cops, murderers, lairs, and some honest people. Every thing ends up tying together and is one great story.

[crayne_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd never read original hardboiled detective fiction before, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the hell out of this Philip Marlowe exploit. It made me yearn for cigars, saxophone music coming from dark alleys and the distant sounds of sirens as I put my weary feet up on a desk that's seen better decades. The plot is intricate and only reveals itself at the last moment with red herrings being strewn about like so many breadcrumbs. I'll be seeing more of Mr. Marlowe's adventures, oh yes.

[reading_fox · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not really standing the test of time, the interest, like the first in the series, is more about the insights to 1940s US then anything in the story itself.Segregation in society is still rife. Marlowe finds himself helping a white giant of a man look for a waitress he was sweet on before he spent some time in jail. Meanwhile Marlow goes looking for paying work, and finds a rich client who's involved in a clever blackmail scheme involving bored housewive's jewellery. Somehow a flirty young thing also gets involved. I've no idea how or why some girl would be driving about on her own in the 40s, but there you go. The whole plot ends up depending on the chance timing of someone visiting Marlowe at the same time as another caller - this rather tedious plot device spoils any interest there may have been in the "mystery".Marlowe certainly retains his various gritty edges, and drinking issues. His one-liners consistently fail to be funny, and for no reason other than maybe insecurity he is persistently rude to all the women he comes across. Despite this he also has the required basic sense of honesty and decentness that enables any detective to function within society.Certainly readable, but more for historical interest in the society of the times, and the areas from which current detetctive literature grew, there is nothing particularly special about it otherwise.

[comfypants · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Philip Marlowe, wise-crackin' like nobody's business - even when there's nobody around to hear him. The plot's a lot sloppier than I expect from a mystery; mostly it's just there for the sake of giving Marlowe a hard time.

[mcc89 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written, perhaps the most 'well-written' of Chandler's mysteries though I still believe it pales in comparison to the giant 'The Long Goodbye'.

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the third book by Chandler I have read. I read it because I had read the the first six titles on the 1990 list "The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time" had been read and this book was no. 7 and I had not read it. It is the hard-boiled detective type book, and Marlowe gets in lots of trouble and is beat up as usual but all comes right in the end. I can't say I was entranced by the book. But he has a third novel on the list, The Long Goodbye, and I will probably read it sometime if I live long enough.

[arttraveller · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In this book, the second novel featuring PI Philip Marlowe, we meet Marlowe as he tries to trace the whereabouts of a young woman. His search will take him on a journey through the bars and saloons of Hollywood into high society and the corridors of power.It's a simple story, well told, and even though it didn't quite match the Big Sleep, it's an enjoyable book from the master of crime ficton.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After reading two of his novels now, I'm beginning to like Raymond Chandler much more for his writing than for his plots. For anyone who thinks crime fiction has no place in the literary world, the Marlowe novels might make you change your mind. Chandler's an amazing writer when it comes to social commentary, the similes, metaphors and the sharp, electric prose he's famous for, and of course, his superb depiction of the city of angels of the 1940s that is so lifelike you almost feel that you're along with him for the ride. The novels are also a way for Chandler to examine American society of the time.While I am not much of an analyst when it comes to reading -- a) there are a huge number of analyses of Chandler and his writing all over the place and b)I'm just not good at it so don't pretend to be -- one thing I particularly noticed in my reading was Chandler's use of the color red. To me, where ever Chandler focused on mentioning red, some kind of danger -- emotional or physical -- was nearby. Velma, Malloy's old sweetheart, was a redhead. Anne Riordan, daughter of an ex-police chief and an ally of Marlowe's in this book, is also a redhead. He likes her enough to keep some of the worst details from her and finds himself thinking about how her apartment would be a "nice room to wear slippers in." He watches a red neon light flashing in the hotel room where he stays just before getting on the water taxi to go out to the gambling boat. He meets ex-cop and boat driver Red Noorgan, with "hair the shade of red that glints with gold," who has "Violet eyes. Almost purple. Eyes like a girl, a lovely girl," with skin Marlowe describes as "soft as silk" and a voice that was "soft, dreamy, so delicate for a big man that it was startling. It made me think of another soft-voiced big man I had strangely liked." There are likely more instances, but I found the use of red quite interesting here.The mystery plots that eventually tie together are a little clunky, but I loved this novel and I wish I had read these books long before now. The writing alone is worth working through the convoluted plotlines, but most of all I love the character of Marlowe. As I found in The Big Sleep, he's a knight of sorts in a city where knights don't really have a place -- and I really like that about him. FYI -- this book was written in the 1940s so you're going to encounter some pretty ugly racial slurs and racist attitudes as you read. That sort of stuff is a bit shocking, but considering the times, not so unusual for back then.definitely recommended -- now on to the third Marlowe novel.