The Black Eyed Blonde

The new Philip Marlowe mystery from the Booker Prize winning John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black

Maybe it was time I forgot about Nico Peterson, and his sister, and the Cahuilla Club, and Clare Cavendish. Clare? The rest would be easy to put out of my mind, but not the black-eyed blonde . . .
It is the early 1950s. In Los Angeles, Private Detective Philip Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client arrives: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, Clare Cavendish wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson.
Soon Marlowe will find himself not only under the spell of the Black-Eyed Blonde; but tangling with one of Bay City's richest families - and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune . . .
'A beautifully rendered hardboiled novel that echoes Chandler's melancholy at perfect pitch' Stephen King'An exceptionally effective act of literary ventriloquism and entirely irresistible' Observer
'First-rate noir . . . It's remarkable how fresh this book feels while still hewing close to the material on which it's based' New York Times