1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Search for the Little Sister, March 21, 2007
This historical novel is set in Southern California of the 1930s and uses real and fictional characters for its murder mystery. Raymond Chandler is the narrator. The `Afterword' explains the rationale of the book, inspired by real-life agency reports. [Did he read any?]
Chapter 1 reviews the mysterious death of Thelma Todd, who may have said "no" after too many "yeses". Chandler wrote stories about crime and detection, not a "socially significant" novel. The story begins with the death of Julian Pascal, Chandler's wife's ex-husband. An apparent suicide in a cemetery. [There is a short and incomplete summary of Chandler's life.] Chandler identified Pascal's body, and explained why he doubted a suicide (Chapter 2). So Chandler starts an investigation into Pascal's death, like a classic pulp fiction story that proves the police theory was wrong. Erle Stanley Gardner, the practical realist, wonders about the miles per gallon for Chandler's Duesenberg "one of the finest automobiles in the world" (p.21).
Events occur as the story moves on. A woman in a white limousine is seen at Pascal's burial. We meet real and fictional people in this novel. A woman hires Chandler to find her little sister. Chandler gets Hammett for this search. A "ghost" tells Chandler it was murder! They visit various places on their quest for the facts. These are described quickly. Some secrets are uncovered by the investigation. Chandler finds the missing little sister. Trouble follows this business.
In Chapter 17 we get the facts behind the mystery. The little sister meets Chandler and tells her story. There is a secretive night visit where they find another body, and the little sister (Chapter 20). When they find a second body Chandler solves the murders in a surprise ending. The last chapter ends the story. [We learn why it is good business to get your money up front.]
I don't know what purpose Nolan had in this portrayal of Chandler. Chandler had served in the front-line trenches of the Great War, unlike Hammett or Gardner. That was about twenty years earlier than this story.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I am glad I did not give up on this interesting novel., August 29, 2001
3-and-a-half stars. There is a Chinese curse that states "May you live in interesting times." So to say The Marble Orchard is an interesting book may be interpreted as a good or a bad thing. And there are good and bad elements to Mr. Nolan's work.
The plot involves Raymond Chandler seeking down the killer of his wife Cissy's first husband, even though all the evidence points to suicide. Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, three thugs and an actress specializing in vampiric roles all play parts in the not-bad mystery.
One of the interesting (and unsuccessful) things about TMO is that it is decidedly not hard-boiled. Which may be a valid take on the premise. After all, the authors who wrote the stories were very different from their creations- educated, generally refined men. But this is a fanciful take on the era anyway, so why not go the extra step, I thought? Most of the people were very polite in this novel; its early sections read like one of the English school of mysteries that Chandler disliked and so vigorously deconstructed in The Simple Art of Murder.
But I read on, and at some point, things subtly shifted for the darker and better, and made me realize that the story structure was skillfully similar, even if the trappings were more urbane: the joes and janes peopling the book got nastier, Chandler got sapped and awakened doped (in a scene very like Farewell, My Lovely); Hammett pulled a gun on some thugs; a blackmail plot surfaced; and duplicitous motives appeared out of what had been to that point a disappointingly linear plot. The resolution was as contrived as any good Black Mask novel should be. Not all that plausible, but possible, and entertaining.
Another great thing is how Nolan plays with the way that Chandler and Philip Marlowe *were* alike: a romantic core which appears late in the novel beneath their crust of cynicism. Also, the camaraderie portrayed between Hammett, Chandler and Gardner is a big plus, even if it was entirely manufactured.
The bad things about the novel end up being very few, but they are harmful. Like many modern writers, Nolan seems embarrassed at the lack of political correctness in the original Black Mask stories he seeks to bring to mind. So he creates characters and subplots which advance the story not a whit and seem to exist only to administer some ethereal type of social justice. This treacle was applied, I am sure, with the best of intentions, but garnered the worst of results, coming off as phony, preachy and altogether out-of-place.
Also, the non-stop factoids are interesting for history and trivia buffs to a point, but Nolan goes too far- a litany of what Hammett read as he began his writing career is unnecessary, dull and obvious. The history of cities is again mildly interesting but superfluous; Chandler painted a better picture of SoCal towns with two snotty comments than do the encyclopedic entries of this novel. And, surprisingly, the Chaplin, Welles, Hearst and Temple cameos actually distract from the atmosphere, as they have no relevancy to the plot whatsoever and instead remind us that what we are reading is not historical at all.
Still, Mr. Nolan has succeeded in writing a very well-crafted novel that held my interest despite being nothing like what I expected- not easy to do. And this Black Mask fan thanks him sincerely for keeping an era and a genre, if not exactly a style, alive and kicking.
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