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1940s: Farewell, My Lovely – This is the Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe. And don’t you forget it
Farewell, My Lovely (Phillip Marlowe)
What you need to know before your trail
Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married – well that was until Malloy was framed by armed robbery. Once he gets out he wants Velma back – and revenge on the person who robbed him of everything
Private Eye Philip Marlowe meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and despite his jaded appearance and his more even jaded heart, he agrees to help him. Dragged from one smoky bar to another, Marlowe’s search for Velma turns up plenty of dangerous gangsters with a nasty habit of shooting first and talking later. And soon what started as a search for a missing person becomes a matter of life and death . . .
Travel Guide
1940s Los Angeles – a world of grime and crime if ever there was one. This novel reads like you’re sitting in a old classic american car with the top down riding around Los Angeles with the commentary of Marlowe in your ear showing you the sights of the city you would normally miss.And of course the social commentary that you only get when riding around in the underbelly of the gritty, raw and racist Los Angeles that this is. One however described in Chandleresque terms:
“Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”
The setting and the characters in it belong to the city’s dark underworld. This is a dark, dark city of Angeles, where the nightlife is one full of crime, death, drugs and guns. Racism is rife and rampant and shows the LAPD attitude to it at the time.
This is however vintage LA: the scent of rain on the tarmac, the lipstick wearing women, the cigarette ash everywhere and the guns, held aloft by one of the city’s tough guys.
Streetview Maps
A) USA - Los Angeles - South Central Avenue
E) A 1930s Los Angeles Theatre
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