This year's Noirpocalypse™ features the adaptation of another Chandler novel that was released (in the US) under the title of Murder, My Sweet. While, I definitely enjoy Chandler's hard-boiled style with its colorful metaphors and rapid-fire dialogue, I'm beginning to think that he just got drunk and made up these plots during an epic late night bender. Perhaps this one holds together slightly better than The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye, but there's still nothing like the sense of neat progression and I-should-have-seen-it-coming closure of Hammett's style. In this case, there are multiple not terribly well integrated subplots and details that are either designed as red herrings (whose redness is never addressed) or were simply left in place when the whole trajectory of the story changed. As with the other cases, the film adaptations actually serve as an improved second draft of the idea, with more care given to integrating the various strands into a (mostly) intelligible whole. Not that I'm complaining. You read Chandler for the ambiance of bourbon and legs, not for the literary design. And this one has bourbon enough to make you feel as large as Moose Malloy.
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