The Long Good-bye is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1953, his sixth novel featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe. Some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, but others rank it as the best of his work. Chandler, in a letter to a friend, called the novel "my best book".
Plot Preview
Outside of "the Dancers," a club in Los Angeles, private detective Philip Marlowe meets Terry Lennox, a drunk with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship over the next few months, having drinks, especially gimlets, together at bars. In June, Lennox shows up late one night at Marlowe's home in "a great deal of trouble" and needing a ride to the airport across the border in Tijuana. Marlowe agrees as long as Lennox does not tell him any details of why he is running. He later finds 5 $100 bills left to him by Terry. On his return to Los Angeles, Marlowe learns that Lennox's wife Sylvia was found dead; she had died before Lennox fled.
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