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Books

Philip Marlowe returns with bark but no bite

A review of Benjamin Black’s The Black-Eyed Blonde. Purists will baulk at the lack of vim to this reincarnation of Raymond Chandler's detective

5 April 2014

9:00 AM

5 April 2014

9:00 AM

The Black-Eyed Blonde Benjamin Black

Mantle, pp.320, £16.99, ISBN: 9781447236689

With so much Nordic noir around, it’s a relief to return to the granddaddy of them all, the hard-boiled private dick, Philip Marlowe. Perhaps it’s inevitable that Benjamin Black’s reboot of Raymond Chandler’s great creation does not have the bite of Chandler in an age when the casual racism, sexism and downright class snobbery of mid-century America is not easy to articulate if you want to keep an audience sympathetic.

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