Playback (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Playback
title_orig =
translator =


author = Raymond Chandler
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series = Philip Marlowe
genre = Mystery, Crime novel
publisher = Hamish Hamilton (UK)
release_date = 1958
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 208 pp (hardback edition)
isbn = NA
preceded_by = The Long Goodbye
followed_by = Poodle Springs

"Playback" is the final complete novel by Raymond Chandler, which features his iconic creation Philip Marlowe. It was published in 1958, the year before his death.

Plot summary

The book puts Marlowe in the position of turning against a client who has hired him (via intermediaries) to follow a woman called Betty Mayfield. He is given the runaround by practically everyone in the small coastal resort town of Esmeralda where he traces Mayfield to. Marlowe encounters a variety of characters with dubious motivations, including a taciturn lawyer and his smart secretary (with whom Marlowe has a sexual encounter), a 'retired' gangster, over-confident would-be hard men of varying morals, a hitman (whose wrists Marlowe smashes), decent cops, an affectingly desperate example of the Fifties American immigrant underclass and the bitter old man who was presumably behind him being hired – as a stooge – in the first place.

It transpires that Betty Mayfield had been married to a man who had suffered a broken neck during the Second World War and that, after a row, she had been caught re-fixing the neck brace on her dead husband's body. She was tried for murder and pronounced guilty by the jury, who consisted of yes men of her antagonistic father-in-law Kinsolving, but the verdict was overturned by the Judge. Kinsolving vowed to hound her wherever she went, which is why she fled to California.

During her train ride West, she is recognised as the fugitive girl by a man, who starts to blackmail her. When this man is found dead on Mayfield's balcony, she panics and calls for Marlowe to help her out, which he does. With the help of the local police captain, he scares off Kinsolving. At the end of the book, Mayfield decides she will marry a local criminal-turned-respectable, who has taken a romantic interest in her; Marlowe lets her go ahead but has a frank talk with the ex-criminal, who obviously hasn't quite mended his ways as he was behind the killing of the blackmailer.

At the book's conclusion, Marlowe is rewarded by providence when an old flame (Linda Loring from the previous novel, "The Long Goodbye"), gets back in touch.

ource of the novel

The novel was reworked by Chandler from a rejected screenplay by the same name he had written some years before. Thought by some to be superior to this book (generally considered to be the weakest of the seven Marlowe novels, perhaps due to its less complex plot and 'pat' resolution), the script has been published independently posthumously.

Trivia

The opening lines of the second chapter served as inspiration for Jonathan Lethem's science fiction-cum-detective novel "Gun, with Occasional Music": "There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket."

"Playback" is the only Marlowe novel that Chandler completed that is set somewhere other than Los Angeles. It's set in a town called Esmeralda, which is a made-up name for La Jolla, where Chandler lived his last few years. "Poodle Springs," which Chandler did not finish, is set in Palm Springs.