Mon 13 Apr 2020
PI Stories I’m Reading: RAYMOND CHANDLER “Wrong Pigeon.â€
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[4] Comments
RAYMOND CHANDLER “Wrong Pigeon.†Short story. PI Philip Marlowe. First magazine publication in Manhunt, February 1960. Previouslypublished, possibly in abridged form, in a British newspaper as “Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate.†Later reprinted as “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case†in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (January 1962) and as “The Pencil” in Argosy (September 1965). Collected as “The Pencil†in The Smell of Fear (H. Hamilton, UK, 1965). Reprinted in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration, edited by Byron Preiss (Knopf, 1988) and as “Wrong Pigeon†in The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg (Carroll & Graf, 1988), among others. TV adaptation: As “The Pencil†on Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, 16 April 1983 (season 1, episode 1), starring Powers Boothe.
And with all of that, I’ve still probably missing something obvious. It was, as the title of the story as it appeared in EQMM, PI Philip Marlowe’s last case, Raymond Chandler having died in 1959, and it’s a good one. Marlowe takes on a job for a guy who wants to get out of the mob, but there’s been a pencil drawn through his name, and he knows the syndicate does not take defections lightly.
It’s a fool’s task, but the promise of $5000 upon completion of a successful escape has a loud way of talking, and that’s in 1959 money. And Marlowe is no fool. He knows that there’s a reason why the job is done so easily. He’s right, of course, and you should be. too, the reader.
It’s been a long time for me to get around to reading this one, and I’m glad I did. I don’t know what the general opinion is of this story, but I think Chandler was still in fine form when he wrote it. The story is light and breezily told, but when it comes down to it, Marlowe is as hardboiled as private eyes really ought to be, especially when it comes to dealing with the syndicate. Very enjoyable.
April 14th, 2020 at 1:32 am
I think it is a strong story too, and clearly in top form, it is also clearly fairly new and not something that he had on the shelf for a long time since the plot and action fit the period it appeared in.
April 14th, 2020 at 11:53 am
I put off reading this one for a long time for a couple of reasons. First, unless I’ve missed something, it isn’t all that easy to find. I do have the issue of MANHUNT that it’s in, but other than that, I think the easiest way to read it is in the MAMMOTH anthology.
But secondly,and maybe more importantly, I thought that a story written so late in Chandler’s life just might not be all that good, including the possibility that it was a story he’d written many years earlier and couldn’t sell.
It turns out that that neither of these particular concerns were in any way justified.
April 16th, 2020 at 10:22 am
I read it and this line popped out at me: “The bell chimed inside and after a while she opened the door in a pale-blue sports shirt and white shorts that were short enough to be friendly.”
April 16th, 2020 at 12:06 pm
One of the better lines in this story, that’s for sure. The girl is Anne Riordan, the daughter of the former Chief of Police in Bay City, and every so often he asks her for help on a case. I’d like to think they had a future together, and who knows, maybe they did.