Farewell,My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Since I just recently read a Dashell Hammet novel (Red Harvest), I decided to read a Raymond Chandler book to compare the two, since the two authors are usually lumped together as the founders of the "hard-boiled" detective novel. I had read this Chandler novel before, but it's the only one I had handy.

Farewell, My Lovely begins when private detective Philip Marlowe accidentally witnesses a murder being committed by a just-released-from-prison bank robber, who is looking for his lost love. Without any current work to do, Marlowe begins looking for her, too. The next day he is hired as a bodyguard for one night, only to be black-jacked and his client murdered while Marlowe is unconscious. Thus begins a series of events during which Marlow meets a psychic reader, the head of a gambling circuit, various corrupt policemen and a few good ones, and the beautiful blond wife of a millionaire, who tries to seduce him. In the end, of course, he ties everything together and solves the mystery.

Now to compare the two writers:

*Both novels have convoluted plots and a large cast of unsavory characters. Chandler's plot has more "red herrings" and develops some suspense, while Hammett's is more straight-forward and the suspense stems from whether the detective can accomplish his goal and still stay alive. Also, Chandler's plot hinges on some rather implausible instances of accidentally meeting just the right person at the right time, while the progression of Hammett's plot seems inevitable and logical.

*The heroes are both smart-mouthed and sarcastic and survive completely against the odds--that's part of the fun of this genre. But Hammett's dialogue is much the snappiest and more natural sounding; Chandler's hero sometimes quotes Shakespeare and somehow that does not quite fit with the rest of his street-smart conversation.

*Chandler has a real talent for place description: "On the porch stood one lonely rocker, and the afternoon breeze made the unpruned shoots of last year's poinsettias tap-tap against the cracked stucco wall. A line of stiff yellowish half-washed clothes jittered on a rusty wire in the side yard."
Now can't you imagine just what kind of person lives in this house, without being told anything further? Chandler also frequently uses a kind of sarcastic reverse description, which is interesting: "The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building."

On the other hand, Hammett excels at quick character descriptions: "Her coarse hair--brown--needed trimming and was parted crookedly. One side of her upper lip had been rouged higher than the other. Her dress was of a particularly unbecoming wine color, and it gaped here and there down one side, where she had neglected to snap the fasteners or they had popped open. There was a run down the front of her left stocking." The novel is full of these quick sketches, which reveal much more than the mere physical appearance of the characters.

*Hammett was the first to come up with the tough, hard-drinking, smart-talking, cynical private detective formula, and his book seems much more authentic to me. He was, after all, a Pinkerton detective for some years. Chandler, a product of an upper-class British school, started writing about ten years later, and his writing has more polish and less grit. I felt that Hammett had actually observed the dark side of America and that Chandler had just learned how to write about it.

Neither of these novels is considered to be the best from the two authors, so this comparison is probably not terribly accurate, but it was interesting to think about. Both Hammett and Chandler are very fun to read and pointed the way for so many subsequent writers of this genre.