The Quirke books’ language is more elegant and less brisk than Chandler’s, but the chance to write a Marlowe book opens up a new world of opportunity for Mr.
Black’s Quirke series - which begins in Dublin when Elvis is popular and positively steams with hidden yearnings and glamorous femme fatale types - owes more than a little to Chandler as well. We can also be glad that the re-animator behind “The Black-Eyed Blonde” is Benjamin Black, who writes his tonier books as John Banville and his delectably noir ones under this pseudonym.
Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest families and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.Only Benjamin Black, a modern master of the genre, could write a new Philip Marlowe novel that has all the panache and charm of the originals while delivering a story that is as sharp and fresh as today's best crime fiction.Among the tentative book and story titles that Raymond Chandler left behind were “The Diary of a Loud Check Suit,” “The Man With the Shredded Ear,” “Stop Screaming - It’s Me” and “The Black-Eyed Blonde.” So we can be glad that last one became Chandler’s latest gift from beyond the grave: a much slinkier moniker that summons Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and the kinds of women who matched wits with him, slyly wrapping him around their dainty, lacquered fingers. Marlowe sets off on his search, but almost immediately discovers that Peterson's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Then a new client is shown in: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. It is the early 1950s, Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Channeling Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Black has brought Marlowe back to life for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, California. Traffic trickled by in the street below, and there were a few pedestrians, too, men in hats going nowhere."So begins "The Black-Eyed Blonde," a new novel featuring Philip Marlowe-yes, that Philip Marlowe. The telephone on my desk had the look of something that knows it's being watched. Raymond Chandler's incomparable private eye is back, pulled by a seductive young heiress into the most difficult and dangerous case of his career"It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving.
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