![]() ![]() The iced tea the love interest is drinking is straight out of Double Indemnity (a film later referenced by Marlowe as he speaks, inevitably, to a young would-be starlet). I wonder whether there’s such a thing as trope-crawling, because that’s what Banville seems to be doing here. When his (fairly perfunctory) first investigations come to nothing he pays a visit to her seafront mansion and, after she’s told him more of the story, they end up kissing. She is Clare Cavendish, daughter of a woman who has made a fortune in the perfume business, and he is fascinated by her. We get the classic opening scene as the good-looking dame visits Marlowe’s office with a mysterious job for him. So far the plot is thin, and I’m practically half-way through already. I’m spending as much time speculating on what that something might be as on the latest twist in the plot. But I imagine that Banville, a serious literary novelist, must have something more than imitation on his mind. Not plausible as in I believe any of it, but in terms of holding up as a Raymond Chandler pastiche. A Philip Marlowe novel written by John Banville? Can it ever be any more than a pastiche, like those James Bonds that people are writing now, or the new sequel to the Stieg Larsson The Girl With… franchise? I don’t know yet. ![]()
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