Does that mean Chandler was somewhat more confident in his novel-construction skills this time out, since he'd already done it once, and spent more time polishing his prose? Or is it purely an observer affect on my part? I don't know, and I don't know if I could know. And that's a good thought to have when discussing a mystery novel, the best of which are strongly about what you can know and what you can't, about facts and history and the motivations of other people.
(I read Farewell, like Sleep, in the first of the two-volume Library of America Chandler collection, Stories and Early Novels. I think the text is basically the same in all editions, though, so that shouldn't make any substantial difference.)
The first plot in Farewell is about Moose Malloy, a giant of a man who just got out of prison after eight years away and is looking for the girl he left behind, Velma. Philip Marlowe is in the wrong place when Malloy visits the nightclub where she used to sing - now changed entirely in ownership and clientele and side of the color line - and is interviewed by the cops after Malloy's questioning techniques prove too much for the manager of that club.
Marlowe has no paid reason to want to find Malloy, but he's not a private detective because he likes to get paid, but because it's the way he thinks and how he likes to work. And the detective officially assigned to the case is old and lazy and not planning to do much; he more or less asks Marlowe to do some free legwork for him. So Marlowe sets off to see if he can find Velma himself, hoping that will lead to the big man.
Soon afterward, he's contacted by Lindsay Marriott, to assist in paying off a ransom gang. This gang - Marlowe is familiar with how it works - hijacks someone rich with something priceless, in this case a necklace of ancient Chinese jade, which would be difficult for them to fence. So they "sell" it back to the owner, through either the insurance company or another intermediary, like Marriott, for a fraction of the price. It's potentially dangerous, and it's a red flag that Marriott only called Marlowe the day of the exchange, but it's not out of the range of reason.
Things go badly at the exchange, and Marlowe is once again questioned by police in a murder case - a different set of cops, in a different Southern California jurisdiction this time. This one he really shouldn't try to investigate himself - it's in a deeply corrupt small city, for one thing - but Marlowe has never been very good at doing what he's supposed to.
Marlowe gets put through the wringer during the course of the two investigations, getting caught up in the schemes of two different con-men-cum-medical-practitioners, plus two attractive young ladies - one rich and glamorous and the owner of the stolen necklace, and the other honest and tough and the daughter of the former local police chief.
Without detailing the plot of the back half of the novel - never a good idea to do when discussing a mystery - Marlowe, who would appear in five more novels from Chandler, makes it out to the end mostly unscathed, and does solve the murders. And they are, as they must be, related.
I always have a vague uneasiness about the "two unrelated murders turn out to be related" plot - it happens a lot in this field, and it always feels a bit too flamboyant too me, too much like the writer is showing off. (Of course, Chandler did it here at least partially because he was taking some existing separate short stories and combining them into a novel, which is the opposite of showing off.) It works here, and it usually works, and it's just my personal prejudices, so I don't know why I mention it.
As I said up top, I found the language in Farewell even more striking than in Sleep. I've seen it claimed that this was Chandler's favorite of his novels, and that may be part of the reason - he's got a lot of great lines and paragraphs and thoughts here. The plot isn't too shabby, either.
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