{"id":2451,"date":"2019-02-24T17:40:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T00:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2451"},"modified":"2019-02-24T17:40:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T00:40:06","slug":"back-from-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2451","title":{"rendered":"Back from the dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m catching up with all the reviews Bob Moyer sent we when he was catching up. And now you can catch up on your pleasurable reading.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer<\/p>\n

ONLY TO SLEEP. A Philip Marlowe Novel. By Lawrence Osborne. Hogarth. 256 pages. $26.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The world\u2019s oldest hard-boiled detective is alive and living between the covers of this book, thanks to the Raymond Chandler estate. They commissioned Lawrence Osborne, no slouch as an author himself, to bring Philip Marlowe back. In Osborne\u2019s conceit, it is 1988, and Marlowe is 72 (using a formula derived from Chandler\u2019s notes and\u00a0books). He\u2019s retired to Mexico, whiling away his days in a hotel bar. Then an insurance company approaches him to find out if the dead man for whom they paid out a fortune is really dead. Marlowe takes the case,\u00a0reasoning, \u201cYou could call it the imperative to go out with full-tilt trumpets and gunshots instead of the quietly desperate sound of a hospital ventilator.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he tracks down the \u201ctruth,\u201d Marlowe travels through the same melancholic, metaphor-filled landscape that Chandler always sent him into. Everywhere he turns, he sees his mortality reflected, his hands in the sun \u201c\u2026a fossil alone in his little rock bed, curled up as if ready for the eons. As sidelined as the old Pacific Electric Red Cars that used to plow their way across West Hollywood.\u201d\u00a0He interviews a man whose hair was \u201c\u2026 spun finely \u2026 and then dyed to the color of an eggplant after a fair amount of stir frying.\u201d\u00a0 A hotel owner has \u201c\u2026 a broken nose, and the bright eyes of the ones who will never die easily.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he meets the dame who inherited the \u201cdead\u201d man\u2019s money, he decides she \u201c\u2026 wasn\u2019t an Able Grable, and she wasn\u2019t a cheap muffin looking for easy money either.\u201d\u00a0 Although he claims his \u201c\u2026 pilot light had long been blown out,\u201d he takes to her while taking after her husband, who is a \u201cdrip\u201d but not dread.<\/p>\n

Osborne moves Marlowe through the same dream-like, surreal plot that Chandler excelled at. In a cavernous hotel room, \u201cThrough my sleep moved old monsters and charlatans. The men beaten in alleyways decades ago, the women resigned to their twilight.\u201d\u00a0When confronted with danger, he \u201c\u2026felt no fear whatever. When a man can already see his end the means of passing through it don\u2019t matter that much.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0He doesn\u2019t hesitate to keep drinking:\u00a0 \u201cI grow old, I grow old, I will take my tequila bold.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he finally decides what to do, whether to side with the dead man or the insurance company, it all comes down to the cash \u2014 and the dame. He sees her one last time, and realizes \u201cShe was the only thread I was handling as I groped my way through the dark on my small and wind-swept odyssey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osborne has taken a \u201cperilous presumption,\u201d as he points out in an afterword \u2014\u201cstepping into the mind of one of (Chandler\u2019s) characters.\u201d\u00a0 The gamble pays off admirably in this worthy sequel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m catching up with all the reviews Bob Moyer sent we when he was catching up. And now you can catch up on your pleasurable reading. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer ONLY TO SLEEP. A Philip Marlowe Novel. By Lawrence Osborne. Hogarth. 256 pages. $26. The world\u2019s oldest hard-boiled detective is alive and living between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[590,5],"tags":[425,1093,1092],"class_list":["post-2451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","tag-detective-fiction","tag-philip-marlowe","tag-raymond-chandler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2453,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions\/2453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}