Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel ‘The Big Sleep’ in 1939. Marlowe’s entanglement with the Sternwood family – and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures – is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The hard-boiled detective’s iconic image burns just as brightly in ‘Farewell My Lovely’, on the trail of a missing nightclub crooner.