Wed 7 May 2014
Reviewed by LJ Roberts: BENJAMIN BLACK – The Black-Eyed Blonde.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
Reviews by L. J. Roberts
BENJAMIN BLACK [John Banville] – The Black-Eyed Blonde. Henry Holt & Co, hardcover, March 2014. Picador, softcover, February 2015. Series character: Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Setting: California City (basically Los Angeles), 1950s.
First Sentence: It was one of those Tuesday afternoons in summer when you wonder if the earth has stopped revolving.
PI Philip Marlowe is hired by the lovely and, apparently, wealthy Claire Cavendish to locate her former lover. Marlowe quickly learns the man was killed in a hit-and-run; news it seems Mrs. Cavandish already knew. Yet she claims to have seen him alive in San Francisco. Marlowe runs into one unexpected event after another in his search to find out what is really going on.
At the very beginning, the author’s voice makes you smile. Black does try to capture the feel of the Golden Age authors but it just never quite rings true. There are cracks in the veneer. Although Black uses terms that are not politically correct for today, they also weren’t accurate for the period. There were small details that were off — straight skirts weren’t called “pencil†skirts in the 50s.
Some of the descriptions in the beginning weren’t bad… “That smile: it was like something she had set a match to a long time ago and then left to smolder on by itself…†but they soon disappeared. It was also painfully clear that this was not written by an American, and certainly not someone who lived and breathed the area as Chandler had done.
Black does capture a bit of Chandler’s dry, ironic voice… ““Someone like who?†He seemed to wince; it was probably my grammar.â€
The plot’s not bad and there were good surprises, good lines… “The world, when you come down to it, is a scary place…â€, but the further one reads, the more it turns from gold, to gold gilt, to brass, to lead, and becomes almost uncomfortable to read.
The Black-Eyed Blonde might be a decent read for those who’ve not read the classics. However, to those who have, it really doesn’t hold together. Once again, I find myself believing that when an author dies, should their character.
Rating: Poor.
May 7th, 2014 at 3:16 pm
I have this book though I haven’t read it yet. I’ll eventually get around to reading it since I love Chandler’s work so much, that I read even warmed over Chandler.
I see Amazon has 123 reviews, mainly favorable but also many 2 and 3 stars. One reader says the novel blends with Chandler like a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake and another exclaims “Chandler is back!”
I look forward to reading it but I won’t be surprised if I have the same reaction as L.J. Roberts.
May 8th, 2014 at 9:44 am
I skimmed through the book at Barnes & Noble, but I finally decided that if I were to buy it,I would wait for the paperback. In general BLONDE has gotten good reviews, some excellent, I believe, but like Walker, I think my reaction will be the same as LJ’s.
I did read the first non-Parker Spenser novel, LULLABY, by Ace Atkins, and while it was done well enough for me to finish it, I won’t read another — not while that are Spenser novels by Parker himself that I haven’t read. When I finished LULLABY I realized that nothing really had happened — a lot of standing in pace, if not wheel spinning.
This is no swipe at Atkins. I have a feeling that the last few that Parker did were much the same way. No rocking the boat necessary when you’ve got a good thing going.
May 8th, 2014 at 4:53 pm
Ironic that Parker, who followed Chandler, is now getting the same treatment.
I agree with the review on this one. At times it manages a glimpse of Marlowe, but he never really comes through. And Marlowe is particularly hard to pastiche because he is all voice setting and attitude, and those are all Chandler.
In general this is a thankless task, though William Boyd’s Solo has been praised as not only equal to Ian Fleming, but better while still true to Bond. I’ll give him a just as good and admit he is a much better and more serious writer.
The problem with this is it needs a genius to recreate the work of a genius. I know there were numerous attempts to do Dumas, at least two sequels to Monte Cristo and many to the Musketeers (there is a whole literature in France uniting or opposing D’Artagnan and Cyrano who were contemporaries), but none of them have Dumas verve or inventiveness.
Although Max Allan Collins has done well with Spillane, but then he spent years getting to know him besides reading him. The same was true in terms of quality of Barry Perowne’s Raffles stories and Francis Gerard’s Sanders stories.
Oddly, Gerard Fairlie, who was Bulldog Drummond, and a much better writer than Sapper, never quite got his Drummond novels right.