Then a new client is shown in: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. It is the early 1950s, Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Channeling Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Black has brought Marlowe back to life for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, California. Traffic trickled by in the street below, and there were a few pedestrians, too, men in hats going nowhere.'So begins The Black-Eyed Blonde, a new novel featuring Philip Marlowe-yes, that Philip Marlowe. The telephone on my desk had the look of something that knows it's being watched.

It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving. The Black-Eyed Blonde is dark, taut and nostalgic, just don’t get it mixed up with The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde by Perry Mason.Full number line 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. However, for me The Black-Eyed Blonde is certainly reminiscent of Chandler’s own work and the beauty of it all is that he manages to convey as easily as Chandler did the brutality of the Mean Streets of LA. Die-hard fans may not enjoy this latest incarnation of Chandler’s private eye and they may also find it a bit lacking. Black has also managed to evoke that sense of place and dialogue that one has come to expect from a Raymond Chandler novel. The story is good and is as noir as one could have envisaged. As pastiches go this is a pretty good one. Fans will remember Robert B Parker’s Perchance to Dream. Let’s be clear, Benjamin Black is not the first author to write about Raymond Chandler’s laconic private eye and he possibly won’t be the last. As more deaths occur Marlowe strives to find out the truth as he realises that he has taken on more than he bargained for. But the case becomes even more mysterious as Marlowe tries to work out why Peterson is so important to his client. His client Mrs Cavendish wishes Marlowe to find a former lover of hers called Rico Peterson who has been missing for two years.

Phillip Marlowe finds himself being persuaded to take on a missing person case. Set after The Long Goodbye and loosely including a plot from his last full-length work. The Black-Eyed Blonde is in some way’s a blast from the past. Would it hold up to the sense of place and style of Chandler and if not why not?

With Raymond Chandler being my all-time favourite crime writer I approached Benjamin Black’s The Black –Eyed Blonde with a certain amount of caution.

The black eyed blond