Chandlertown: The Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe

116 Pages·1983·11.821 MB·English

by  Edward Thorpe

ISBN []-312-15A51-7 >$1E.T5
CHAltDLERTOUfll
The Los Angeles ef Philip marloue
Edward Thorpe
“The law was something to be mani­
pulated for profit and power. The streets
were dark with something more than night.”
—Raymond Chandler
Here is Los Angeles through the eyes of
Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled private
eye featured in such renowned Raymond
Chandler novels as The Big Sleep and
Farewell My Lovely. Colorful, corrupt,
glamorous, and dangerous—that was L. A.
during the thirties and forties, and in
Chandlertown Edward Thorpe recreates its
vivid landscape. Marlowe was obsessed
with gangsters, cars, guns, and a certain
kind of woman, and he saw it all on the lush
boulevards as well as on the seedy down­
town streets.
Thorpe cleverly contrasts Marlowe’s
L.A. with its contemporary counterpart,
illuminating how much has changed—and
how much remains the same. Today, as
yesterday, glitter and glamour coexist with
a shadowy subculture—organized crime,
cops on the take, blackmail in high places—
and it is that deadly combination that
makes L.A. so exciting. Photographs
throughout the text illustrate the land­
marks cited by Chandler in his novels.
(continued on back flap)
CHAHDLER10UII1
By the same author
The Night I Caught the Santa Fe Chief
CHANDLERTOWN
The Los Ang eles of Philip Marlowe
E d w a r d T h o r p e
St. Martin’s Press
New York
chandlertown. Copyright © 1983 by Edward Thorpe. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information,
address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Thorpe, Edward.
Chandlertown: the Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe.
1. Chandler, Raymond, 1888-1959—Settings.
2. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Description. 3. Chandler,
Raymond, 1888-1959—Characters—Philip Marlowe.
I. Title.
PS3505. H3224Z87 1984 813'.52 83-24413
ISBN 0-312-12851-7
First Published in Great Britain in 1983 by Vermilion & Company
First U.S. Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
(
oiiehis
Author’s Note 9
1 All colours of the spectrum 11
2 A world gone wrong 13
3 Because they are phoney 18
4 Everything else was junk 32
5 A faint smell of ocean 40
6 One-man death watch 48
7 Erotic as a stallion 54
8 Punch drunk by this time 62
9 Women make me sick 68
10 A flesh-pink Mercedes-Benz 75
11 I’ll take the big, sordid, dirty city 81
12 An agonizing experience 90
13 The chimpanzee who played the violin 98

For
Arlen and Shel Stuart