The Black Eyed Blonde

By: Benjamin Black

Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris

In this gripping and deeply evocative crime novel, Benjamin Black returns us to the dark, mesmerising world of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and his detective Philip Marlowe; one of the most iconic and enduringly popular detectives in crime fiction.

Now a major film, Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger.

It is the early 1950s. In Los Angeles, Private Detective Philip Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client arrives: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, Clare Cavendish wants Marlowe to find her former lover.

Soon Marlowe will find himself not only under the spell of the Black-Eyed Blonde; but tangling with one of Bay City’s richest families – and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune...

©2014 Benjamin Black (P)2014 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd

Critic reviews

"Banville lets us know from the very start of The Black-Eyed Blonde that we are in the safest of hands here... Banville has largely perfected Chandler's much-mimicked, seldom-bettered knack for similes and one-liners... An exceptionally effective act of literary ventriloquism and entirely irresistible." (Observer)

"Clever bird, this Banville, I thought to myself, tilting my fedora back. He’s got Marlowe back on his feet all right. I shook out a cigarette, poured another whiskey and read to the end. The Black-Eyed Blonde is an open-and-shut case." (Financial Times)

"Somewhere Raymond Chandler is smiling, because this is a beautifully rendered hardboiled novel that echoes Chandler's melancholy at perfect pitch." (Stephen King)