About this title: Marlowe is hired to search for Roger Wade, a novelist who has disappeared on a drinking binge. Wade's wife, Eileen, hopes that Marlowe will become Wade's bodyguard. Marlowe also encounters Terry Lennox, husband of a nymphomaniac heiress who is ultimately murdered, and Marlowe must help Terry, now a suspect, escape to Mexico. In this novel, Marlowe's disillusionment with the human character is far more bitter than in previous books. But Marlowe does, finally, allow himself to fall in love--with Linda Loring, Terry Lennox's sister-in-law. This novel won Chandler an Edgar award.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780345305824ISBN:0345305825
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Solid book with clean tanning pgs, book shows shelf, edge & corner wear, crease on back cover. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780345305824ISBN:0345305825
Description: Acceptable. Overall below average used book. May have highlighting, underlining, notes, price sticker on cover, or be an ex-library book. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1977-04-12
ISBN-13:9780345257345ISBN:0345257340
Description: Good. Binding is tight and square. Has minor underlining. Cover has wear, creases, some tears, ect. We recommend EXPEDITED MAIL for even faster delivery! read more
Edition: Reprint.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books, NY
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780345257345ISBN:0345257340
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. 1978 Ballantine paperback. NOT EX LIB! Bright pages with a couple phrases underlined, barely creased spine, writing inside front cover, moderate edgewear, some cover scuffing & creasing. 312 p. Glued binding. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780345257345ISBN:0345257340
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Pages are unmarked. Binding is tight. Cover has surface creasing and edge wear, cupping and creasing to spine. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780345288592ISBN:0345288599
Description: Good- The Long Goodbye by Chandler, Raymond. Ballantine, 1980. Binding: Mass Market Paperback Dust Jacket: No jacket. NOTES: 8th printing. Showing exterior wear/creasing, contents are overall clean with no owner markings. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1971
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover has some wear with two small tears at top edge of front, spine uncreased, tanned pages appear to be unmarked. 316 p. 22 cm. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780345023964ISBN:034502396X
Description: Very Good. 034502396X. Pb, laminated, light wear/soil, crease at spine, spine label, inside covers re-inforced, card pocket on inside rear cover, libstamp on 1st & title pg/pg edges, 5th printing; Ex-Library; 12mo 7"-7½" tall. read more
"I read recently that The Long Goodbye is considered Raymond Chandler's best book. So with the impulsive purchase satisfaction afforded by the Kindle, I downloaded it and read it. Now I see that Chandler has been collected by the Library of America. No surprise in that he is a superb prose stylist and one of the best writers of dialog I've read in a long, long time. The plot of the Long Goodbye is simple: a wealthy heiress is murdered and her husband becomes the main suspect. But the novel is really about Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe and how he gets drawn into the plot. I thought I had read all of the thriller classics back in college but I must have missed Chandler. I'm happy to see there are many more to go."
"the master and the originator of the hard boiled detective . often copied never equalled . i re-read this after a number of yeras and it still sizzles . the dialogue and cynicism are still whip sharp . down these mean streets marlowe still wearily upholds his warped self styled integrity in a world of corrupt police , politicians , doctors and businessmen . the women, usually the wives of the rich , are depicted as sharp and none too savoury either . marlowe has seen it all and doesn't much like it . this is more a why dunnit that a who dunnit and being the last of chandler's novels it is paced quite slowly . at this stage of his life chandler was an alchoholic and there is a lot of attention to drinking to escape boredom . i loved the description of wealthy california . to be wealthy in california is to be able to escape the heat and live in the hills away from working people . it is also to be decadent lazy and spoiled . chandler sems to have a bit of an axe to grind about the doctors to the rich , who seem to paid to dole out drugs to ease the pain of having too much money . i must go back to some of the other novels " to say goodbye is to die a little " is amongst the quotes . another is " the sandwich was as full of rich flavour as a piece torn off an ols shirt . Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides , preferably a little wilted . Brilliant !"
"I'm not super well-versed in the mystery genre, but I have a feeling this is as good as it gets. What I appreciated most about the story is that while Marlowe is almost always principled, there are moments where he slips -- he seems a hair's-breadth from having sex with Roger Wade's wife, and unabashedly kisses her in an earlier scene -- and his feelings on it remain ambiguous, territory he'd rather not explore. Likewise he is also inexplicably nice to Terry Lennox, who doesn't really demonstrate much in the way of redeeming qualities, and doesn't pay Marlowe for his help. Why does he act this way? Marlowe's obviously a loner archetype, but there are flashes of something deeper and nuanced under his surface.
I also like how the plotlines overlap, and how Chandler is willing to let them spool out as they would in real life, where weeks sometime go by between events, and some things seem forgotten and done with only to resurface later on. Perhaps for these reasons I'm not a huge fan of the ending, which feels a tiny bit too pat to me. If it were up to me? Maybe I would end it with the Linda Loring scene, which is equal parts sweet and sad.
"When you need a good nostalgic trip into the land of private detectives, there is no one better to curl up with than the boorish, but likeable Philip Marlowe. How have I not discovered Chandler before?
First of all, I thought I had the plot all figured out, but then Chandler fooled me - okay, which isn't hard to do, I'll admit. But it's nice to be surprised by the endings of books every once in awhile. And while some of the stuff is a tad overdone here in the twenty-first century, I have to remind myself Chandler was one of the first to perfect the hardboiled detective novel.
I've never been a big noir person. But I have to admit, the language in his book is incredible, the dialogue is rich, and the characters fun. I can totally picture all of the fast-talking cops, the sleazy mobsters, the femme fatales. I enjoyed reading it...even though I felt like I had been reading a long time and I looked down, was 70 pages in, and it looked like I had just started. It's long and when you have your husband asking you every 5 minutes if you're done with your book yet, it starts to feel a little drawn-out. I mean...there is twist number one, twist number two, twist number three...and then a resolution. And then some more resolution.
I didn't mind it too much by that point because I was sucked in, but settling in for this book took a little bit more doing than the Graftons that I can down in an afternoon. This is the way I see it: Raymond Chandler was one of the best writers of the 20th-century. He just happened to enjoy writing crime novels.
Good writing. Good story. I'll go pick up more of Marlowe as soon as I get through some of my other 'to-reads'..."
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