The Long Goodbye (novel)

The Long Good-bye

Cover of the first British edition
Author	Raymond Chandler
Language	English
Series	Philip Marlowe
Genre	Detective fiction
Publisher	Hamish Hamilton (UK) Houghton Mifflin (U.S.)
Publication date	1953
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	320 pp
Preceded by	The Little Sister
Followed by	Playback

The Long Goodbye is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1953, his sixth novel featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe. Some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, but others rank it as the best of his work. Chandler, in a letter to a friend, called the novel "my best book" and recalled the agony of writing it while his wife was terminally ill.

The novel is notable for using hard-boiled detective fiction as a vehicle for social criticism and for including autobiographical elements from Chandler's life.

In 1955, the novel received the Edgar Award for Best Novel.

The novel opens outside a club called the Dancers. It is late October or early November 1949. Philip Marlowe meets a drunk named Terry Lennox, a man with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship over the next few months. In June 1950, Lennox shows up late one night at Marlowe's home in "a great deal of trouble" and needing a ride to the Tijuana airport. Marlowe agrees as long as Lennox does not tell him any details of why he is running.

On his return to Los Angeles, Marlowe learns that Lennox's wife was found dead in her guest house and that she died before Lennox fled. Marlowe is arrested on suspicion of murder after refusing to co-operate with investigators, who want him to confess that he helped Lennox flee.

After three days of antagonizing his interrogators, Marlowe is released, the police explaining that Lennox has been reported to have committed suicide in Otatoclán with a full written confession by his side. Marlowe gets home to find a cryptic note from Lennox containing a "portrait of Madison" (a $5,000 bill).

Marlowe gets a call from Howard Spencer, a New York publisher, who asks him to investigate a case. One of Spencer's best writers, Roger Wade, has a drinking problem and has been missing for three days. Initially Marlowe refuses, but after Wade's wife, Eileen, also asks for Marlowe's help, he consents. Marlowe finds Wade in a makeshift detox facility in an isolated and soon to be abandoned ranch. He takes his fee, but the Wades' stories do not match.