Philip Marlowe: The Goodbye Coast

- Blurb -

The seductive and relentless figure of Raymond Chandler' s detective, Philip Marlowe, is vividly re-imagined in present-day Los Angeles. Here is a city of scheming Malibu actresses, ruthless gang members, virulent inequality, and washed-out police. Acclaimed and award-winning novelist Joe Ide imagines a Marlowe very much of our time: he' s a quiet, lonely, and remarkably capable and confident private detective, though he lives beneath the shadow of his father, a once-decorated LAPD homicide detective, famous throughout the city, who' s given in to drink after the death of Marlowe' s mother. Marlowe, against his better judgement, accepts two missing person cases, the first a daughter of a faded, tyrannical Hollywood starlet, and the second, a British child stolen from his mother by his father. At the center of COAST is Marlowe' s troubled and confounding relationship with his father, a son who despises yet respects his dad, and a dad who' s unable to hide his bitter disappointment with his grown boy. Together, they will realize that one of their clients may be responsible for murder of her own husband, a washed-up director in debt to Albanian and Russian gangsters, and that the client' s trouble-making daughter may not be what she seems. Steeped in the richly detailed ethnic neighborhoods of modern LA, Ide' s COAST is a bold recreation that is viciously funny, ingeniously plotted, and surprisingly tender.