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Review
"Raymond Chandler is a master." --"The New York Times
"
"[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered." --"The New Yorker
"Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious." --Robert B. Parker, "The New York Times Book Review
"Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye." --"Los Angeles Times
"Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist." --"The Boston Book Review
"Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler's prose. . . . He wrote like an angel." --"Literary Review
"[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision." --Joyce Carol Oates, "The New York Review of Books
"Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence." --Ross Macdonald
"
"Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude." --Erle Stanley Gardner
"
"Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since." --Paul Auster
"[Chandler]'s the perfect novelist for our times. He takes us into a different world, a world that's like ours, but isn't." --Carolyn See
"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
"
"[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered." --"The New Yorker
"Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious." --Robert B. Parker, "The New York Times Book Review
"Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye." --"Los Angeles Times
"Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist." --"The Boston Book Review
"Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler's prose. . . . He wrote like an angel." --"Literary Review
"[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision." --Joyce Carol Oates, "The New York Review of Books
"Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence." --Ross Macdonald
"
"Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude." --Erle Stanley Gardner
"
"Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since." --Paul Auster
"[Chandler]'s the perfect novelist for our times. He takes us into a different world, a world that's like ours, but isn't." --Carolyn See
"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Toby Stephens stars in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Raymond Chandler's final completed Philip Marlowe mystery. Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the '40s and '50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily. In "Playback", Marlowe is awakened early in the morning by a phone call from a lawyer. Clyde Umney instructs him to meet the eight o'clock train from Chicago, and shadow one of the passengers. The lady in question, Eleanor King, is beautiful, classy and clearly unhappy. Obediently, Marlowe follows her - all the way to Esmerelda, where she's going under the name Betty Mayfield and being leaned on by a cheap blackmailer. Stuck doing a sneaky job for people he doesn't like, Marlowe feels even grubbier than usual: and he's soon in more trouble than usual too as he comes up against gangsters, hard men and a hitman...Starring Toby Stephens, this exciting dramatisation retains all the verve of Chandler's last novel.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Philip Marlowe rousted from his bed, by 'Clyde Umney, the lawyer', finds himself dispatched to meet the San Diego train, to follow a melancholy redhead; armed with a general description and his fees been paid up front, courtesy of a snobby blonde secretary.
It doesn't take Marlowe long to discover that the redheads in trouble, and the ever chivalrous Marlowe gives her a helping hand, as he try's to figure out why he's been hired to follow her, and why she's in a jam. As he digs into the case Marlowe uncovers a labyrinth of blackmailers, a body that moves, bitter rich old men, an arrogant PI, a gigolo, a psychopath, a racketeer, decent policemen and disaffected low life's. Bad girls and one-nightstands, he gets the Snobby blonde with the wining line, 'what are you doing tonight? And don't tell me you've got a date with four sailors again?'
The novel leaves you wondering how Marlowe ever makes a living when he spends most of his time either giving money back or refusing it.
It's a wonderfully distilled story, sharp and to the point. Although not his greatest work Chandler still gives you the usual superb characterisations, dialogue, wit and style, providing a very lucid feeling of America mid-twentieths century.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'm a big Chandler fan, have taught The Big Sleep as a text at A level and generally think he's a great writer with a flair for creating an authentic environment for his authentic characters to run around in and get up to mischief.
Playback just doesn't quite pass muster in these terms. The environments are still authentic but somehow not brought to life in the same way. The characters are shallower somehow; they seem almost like caricatures of hardboiled days gone by. It feels like he's forcing it. Where novels like The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye et al seem to unfold effortlessly around Philip Marlowe's everyman, in Playback it all seems to be being pushed through. There's less a sense of being involved in something and more of chasing something that doesn't quite ever get captured.
Still worth a read if you're a fan of the genre, of Chandler, or just of a good book, but not on a par with the mastery of his earlier novels. Marlowe himself says halfway through the book that he hopes he might wake up knowing what the hell he's supposed to be doing; I couldn't help wonder if Chandler had thought the same thing while writing it.
Playback just doesn't quite pass muster in these terms. The environments are still authentic but somehow not brought to life in the same way. The characters are shallower somehow; they seem almost like caricatures of hardboiled days gone by. It feels like he's forcing it. Where novels like The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye et al seem to unfold effortlessly around Philip Marlowe's everyman, in Playback it all seems to be being pushed through. There's less a sense of being involved in something and more of chasing something that doesn't quite ever get captured.
Still worth a read if you're a fan of the genre, of Chandler, or just of a good book, but not on a par with the mastery of his earlier novels. Marlowe himself says halfway through the book that he hopes he might wake up knowing what the hell he's supposed to be doing; I couldn't help wonder if Chandler had thought the same thing while writing it.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Playback isn't an ideal introduction into Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. In fact the final chapter will only be understood by people who have previously read The Long Goodbye.
Very little actually happens in Playback. There's only one murder and very little fighting. Marlowe spends most of the novel just trying to figure out exactly what he's supposed to be doing. Marlowe eventually cracks a mystery, but to satisfy his own curiosity, not on the instructions of his client.
Marlowe is more reflective than ever and there are some wonderful meditations.
This isn't a detective novel, it's a novel featuring a detective. The mystery is not the key element of this book, rather it is a meditation on the power structures of a wealthy small town.
Chandler fanatics talk about Playback with a hushed reverence. Read it and you gain access to Marlowe's soul. Or is it Raymond Chandler?
Very little actually happens in Playback. There's only one murder and very little fighting. Marlowe spends most of the novel just trying to figure out exactly what he's supposed to be doing. Marlowe eventually cracks a mystery, but to satisfy his own curiosity, not on the instructions of his client.
Marlowe is more reflective than ever and there are some wonderful meditations.
This isn't a detective novel, it's a novel featuring a detective. The mystery is not the key element of this book, rather it is a meditation on the power structures of a wealthy small town.
Chandler fanatics talk about Playback with a hushed reverence. Read it and you gain access to Marlowe's soul. Or is it Raymond Chandler?
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Short thriller
Playback is, by far, Raymond Chandler's shortest novel and can almost be read as a kind of postscript to the much thicker The Long Goodbye, or a sort of love-letter (or farewell)... Read more
Published 1 month ago by T. Bently
An unfinished work - beware.
Nowhere in this edition of Playback does it say what it should: that this is an unfinished piece of work. Read more
Published 23 months ago by A A Catenaccio
Marlowe's Swan Song
Although Chandler did begin another Philip Marlowe novel, this is the last one he completed, and is very much the swan song for his iconic detective who possesses all of the... Read more
Published on 5 Dec 2008 by Martin Turner
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