Only THE LONG GOODBYE merits higher place in the shining canon of prose-poet Raymond Chandler. This violent, shabby, hilarious, and ultimately very moving novel rockets P.I. Phillips Marlowe through the darkest, seamiest side of Chandler's textured world Los Angeles. In no other novel does Chandler's razor sharp and witty prose slice so sharply, and his sense of tragic irony ("It isn't funny that a man should die, but it is funny that a man should die for so little") reaches its zenith. Hard to put down, impossible to forget.