'I know it sounds corny, but I could drill you and get away with it. I really could. ' 'Okay,' I said thickly, 'For fifty bucks a day I don't get shot. That costs seventy-five. ' PI Philip Marlowe is mixing a little business with pleasure - he's getting paid to follow a mysterious and lovely redhead called Eleanor King. And wherever Miss King goes, trouble seems to follow. But she's easy on the eye and Marlowe's happy to do as he's told, all in the name of chivalry, of course. But one dead body later and what started out as a lazy afternoon's snooping soon becomes a deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity - and murder . . . 'Raymond chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since'Paul Auster