Opening with an encounter between Philip Marlowe and one of Chandler's most memorable characters, the man-mountain Moose Malloy, Farewell, My Lovely develops into a hectic rollercoaster ride through a southern California peopled by a gallery of grotesques, from the sinister psychic Jules Amthor to the drunkenly flirtatious Mrs Florian. Marlowe just happens to be passing when the giant Malloy, recently released from prison and 'about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food', arrives at a black club where his girlfriend Velma used to work. Moose wants to see little Velma again and he is not going to listen to claims from the current club manager that he does not know where she is. In the course of interrogating the unfortunate manager, who truly does not know anything about Velma, Moose inadvertently kills him and exits stage left. Intrigued, Marlowe begins his own enquiries into the missing woman's whereabouts. Another case, in which the private eye is asked to assist in the handing over of a ransom for a valuable piece of jewelry, turns out to be closely connected with Velma's disappearance. As he pursues the truth, Marlowe is subjected to a series of beatings, doped to the eyeballs and imprisoned in an illegally run sanatorium, and threatened by cops and criminals alike but still succeeds in revealing what has really become of Velma. However, the revelation brings little but death and disaster to everyone, from Velma herself to the giant, lovelorn Moose. Chandler's second novel, often claimed to be his own favorite among his books, is a masterpiece of noir fiction. Told in the unmistakable, wisecracking voice of Philip Marlowe, it is filled with breathless action and memorable dialogue. And, beneath all the richness and humor of Chandler's prose, there is a melancholy and romantic story of archetypal American dreams crumbling to dust under the unforgiving Los Angeles sun.

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