Trouble Is My Business

"I see him always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated."
-- from a letter from Chandler to Maurice Guinness,
dated February 21, 1959, regarding Marlowe.

(Thanks to the web site on Marlowe at Thrillingdectective.com)

Updated - January 2, 2008

..."She said, "I need a man." I watched her shake ash from the cigarette to the shiny top of the desk where flakes of it curled and crawled in the draft from an open window.

I need a man good-looking enough to pick up a dame who has sense of class, but he's got to be tough enough to swap punches with a power shovel. I need a man who can act like a bar lizard and backchat like Fred Allen, only better, and get hit on the head with a beer truck and think some cutie in the leg-line topped him with a breadstick..."

From the book available at Amazon

From ''Farewell, My Lovely'': ''It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window''