Reviews for Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe

The average rating for Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-07-07 00:00:00 Marcus Hum On paper, this book sounds terrific. Semi-famous mystery authors take up the iconic Marlowe character and write short stories that span the several decades of his fictional career. Throw in a short story from Chandler himself, some forewords/afterwords and a map, and bam. Reality is much more cruel. I think out of the dozens of stories in this book, only 2 or 3 were really entertaining. I think Chandler's style was so close to parody itself, that imitating it is very difficult. It can slip into parody, but more often, these stories came off as just above-average fan-fiction. Some were pretty appalling, too. Having more than one story that includes Chandler and Marlowe meeting is ridiculous.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-22 00:00:00 John Wadsworth This is one of those books that I started years ago, lost repeatedly, and have only just finished, so take this review with a tablespoon of salt (and, in fact, it should really only apply to the last ten or so stories). It's interesting. It's interesting to see people try to write like Chandler. Some of the stories are good. Some are not. But I don't think any of the authors really captured Chandler's flair for ridiculous metaphor (some ignored it altogether, others were obviously trying too hard), but what can you do? It is, at heart, a collection of Marlowe fan fiction, and it's okay. For fan fic, it's pretty good, but it's not Chandler, and I get the impression from the authors' blurbs, they all knew, at heart, that it never really could be.