The Second Murderer - Denise Mina

 The Second Murderer is a Philip Marlowe novel.   Yes, that Philip Marlowe, the Raymond Chandler one, continued by the fabulous Denise Mina.   It is, unsurprisingly, fabulous.   Mina does not put a foot wrong in recreating the mean streets of LA, the Forties repartee, the tone of the original.   Tone is the key, because Chandler was a lot more cutting in his moral judgments than most people remember.

I've read at least one other Marlowe continuation, the one where he comes out of retirement, but Mina is wise to stick to the Forties.  This is because she is so damn good at establishing period.  I thought her Rizzio was superb and am looking to pick up her Savanarola take, Three Fires.   It doesn't have to be half a millennium ago for Mina, her Peter Manuel novel, The Long Drop, was equally convincing.

Here, Marlowe is summoned by an evil millionaire to track down his errant daughter and sole heiress.   Marlowe finds her dabbling on the art scene - acting as guide for an Abstract Expressionist exhibition for a gallerist who is a brilliant amalgam of Peggy Guggenheim and Big Edie Bouvier in Grey Gardens (and she's just a walk-on character).   From there Marlowe is drawn to the Lesbian scene.   He is in conflict and unofficial partnership with female detective Anne Riordan whose advances, professional and personal, he has previously spurned, and butts heads with Moochie Ruud, rising star of the LAPD thanks to marrying the boss's unappealling daughter.

Key to the book's success is Mina's ability to pull off Chandler's trick - the murder and who did it is only the device that brings the characters together.   It doesn't matter who dies or who did it.   I only finished reading yesterday morning and I have already forgotten who did it.   Interestingly I do remember who the titular second murderer was, but never guessed whilst reading.   Brilliant, I do hope Mina writes more Marlowe.

Only To Sleep - Lawrence Osborne - Lawrence Osborne

I was unfamiliar with Lawrence Osborne, once very familiar with Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe.  Here, the two come together, Osborne having been commissioned by the copyright owners to write a Marlowe continuation novel, alongside the better-known John Banville and Robert B Parker.

Osborne does it very well.  He takes the latest possible birth date for Marlowe and has him as a septuagenarian in the late 1980s, living in retirement in Mexico.  He is contacted by an insurance company who want him to investigate the death of wealthy US socialite Donald Zinn who recently turned up drowned on a Mexico beach.  Suspicions have been raised because Zinn's widow Dolores is very much younger and now very much richer.

The insurance company makes Marlowe a generous offer.  He thinks, one last payday, a sort of farewell tour of Southern California and other parts of Mexico.  Where's the harm?

Marlowe soon finds out.  This is 1988, after all, the age of new money, wealth-worship and mega con-tricks.  Is Zinn one of them?  To what extent is the beautiful Dolores - a Chandleresque siren if ever there was one - involved?  What other murky forces are in play?

Osborne lived on the US-Mexico border around this time and worked as a reporter.  He knows exactly the world he is describing and does it beautifully, without copying Chandler's style but deploying all the key tropes.  Like the best Chandler, the ending is not fully resolved, because these things never are, and because leaving the reader speculating is the best way to go.  I for one was spellbound all the way through.

PS: Banville's continuation Marlowe is Black-Eyed Blonde, written under his Benjamin Black alias and reviewed on this blog way back in 2014.