Toby Stephens stars in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatization of Raymond Chandler s second Philip Marlowe mystery Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the 40s and 50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amid the corruption he encounters daily. In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe has a chance encounter with a not-so-gentle giant outside Florian s nightclub. Just released from prison, Moose Malloy is looking for his old flame, red-haired Velma Valento, who he last saw eight years ago. Before Marlowe can blink, Malloy has smashed up the club, broken the manager s neck, and headed out of the door. Marlowe knows this mess is none of his business, but he has a hunch that he can find Velma. He just has to hope that curiosity doesn t get him killed as well Starring Toby Stephens, this fast-paced dramatization is full of wisecracks and colorful characters, and retains all the charm and humor of Chandler s stylish, suspenseful novel."
Author
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been realized into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. Chandler's Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, are considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective," both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe. Some of Chandler's novels are considered to be important literary works, and three are often considered to be masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery".
