Playback

Playback is the final complete novel by Raymond Chandler, which features his iconic creation Philip Marlowe. It was published in 1958, the year before his death. The book puts Marlowe in the position of turning against a client who has hired him (via intermediaries) to follow a woman called Betty Mayfield. He is given the runaround by practically everyone in the small coastal resort town of Esmeralda where he traces Mayfield. Marlowe encounters a... more

Playback is the final complete novel by Raymond Chandler, which features his iconic creation Philip Marlowe. It was published in 1958, the year before his death. The book puts Marlowe in the position of turning against a client who has hired him (via intermediaries) to follow a woman called Betty Mayfield. He is given the runaround by practically everyone in the small coastal resort town of Esmeralda where he traces Mayfield. Marlowe encounters a variety of characters with dubious motivations, including a taciturn lawyer and his smart secretary (with whom Marlowe has a sexual encounter), a 'retired' gangster, over-confident would-be hard men of varying morals, a hitman (whose wrists Marlowe smashes), decent cops, an affectingly desperate example of the Fifties American immigrant underclass and the bitter old man who was presumably behind him being hired – as a stooge – in the first place. It transpires that Betty Mayfield had been married to a man who had suffered a broken neck during... less