Product Description

Philip Marlowe’s on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband’s collection. That’s the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That’s also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA gets cops’ noses out of joint. If Marlowe doesn’t wrap this one up fast, he’s going to end up in jail – or worse, in a box in the ground …

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29322 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.

Customer Reviews

You don't like me very well?.... Does anybody?
You don't like me very well?.... Does anybody?


Every writer is faced with the question. What is it about?

I wonder how Raymond Chandler answered this question. His plots are so convoluted that it would be difficult for him to have told anyone.

I have been promising myself for years to read all the novels of Raymond Chandler because he is a master of lean sharp prose. Philip Marlowe is a wisecracking private eye. The plot is that he gets called in by Mrs Murdock to find a rare old coin that she claims was stolen by her daughter in law who she does not like and that he is to keep is quiet as she does not want the police involved.

Marlowe takes on the job not that she likes Mrs Murdock who seems to have no redeeming features. He goes in search of it and tracks it down whilst having unexplained murders happening around him.

I am sure Chandler had no idea how the story was going by just had people killed and and gave himself the task of giving an explanation at the end. The stories are in the first person so we can only see and know what Marlowe knows as he goes along.

I was determined to get to the end of the book but the journey is the best part as the dialogue and prose sparkles with great lines and descriptions.Even though the story is set in 1940s California is does not sound like a period piece or out of date.

I read it slowly to soak up and absorb the words and language used. Marlowe has a soft side and helps out the underdog in this case being Mrs Murdock's secretary who she treats badly but we do not know why.

Treat yourself start reading Raymond Chandler these are top of the range books and you are in for a treat. I am moving on to all the other novels. I have seen all the films but the novels are where it all started

Raymond Chandler, master of detective stories
I collect thrillers. They make life bearable in the face of lousy weather and incompetent and dishonourable 'bankers'. Raymond Chandler's suoper prose lift me above all this. He's the one who made it all happen, and this is another fine read. Read it before you die.