David Thomson · Martinique in Burbank: Bogart and Bacall · LRB 19 October 2023 lrb.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lrb.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Los Angeles may have found her Virgil in an Anglo-Irish-American detective novelist named Raymond Chandler (1888-1959). The character Chandler led through L.A.’s underworld in 7 now-classic novels was Philip Marlowe, a wise-cracking private eye whose clients dragged him through the heart of the city’s darkness but whose native wits saved him, more world weary but no worse for wear. Chandler singlehandedly elevated the crime novel into literature and Hollywood adaptations of his work, starring Bogey, Mitchum and others, set the standard for American film noir.