Under his crime-writing alter ego Benjamin Black, John Banville has written a new Philip Marlowe novel with the blessings of Raymond Chandler's estate. The title is taken from Chandler's notebooks and also echoes that of Erle Stanley Gardner's 1944 Perry Mason mystery The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde.
Is it a pastiche or a parody? Black has said he hoped "to write in the spirit of Chandler, rather than to try to ape his style"--in other words, it's a really good forgery. It takes place on a familiar stage: Bay City, Calif., in the early 1950s. Marlowe is in his office on "one of those Tuesday afternoons when you wonder if the Earth has stopped revolving." In walks a new case: a blonde with black eyes "deep as a mountain lake." The wealthy Mrs. Clare Cavendish wants Marlowe to find Nico Peterson, her former lover, missing for two months. It isn't long before he realizes it's a setup: a police friend tells him Peterson was killed months ago. Marlowe informs his client; she says, "I know." Still, she saw Peterson a couple days ago and wants Marlowe to find him again.
This sort of ever-complicating web of lies and deceptions was the hallmark of a convoluted Chandler mystery. Black lays it out perfectly with rich, sharp prose to match. It's a good approximation of the "real" Marlowe; Black even brings back Bernie Ohls, Marlowe's detective friend, and Terry Lennox from The Long Goodbye, which this novel eerily echoes. Chandler's fans will absolutely love it. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher