I have had the pleasure of reading all five books in the Authors 'IQ' series, and thoroughly enjoyed all of them, with the reworking of a modern day 'Sherlock Holmes'. Now he turns is attention to another legendary literary classic detective in 'Philip Marlowe'. The usual superb characters and plenty of mystery with surprises and plot twists along the way. Witty banter and sometimes laugh out loud humour I have come to expect from this Author. Completely engaging and gripping from first to last page. Clever descriptive imaginative intelligent and Completely and utterly recommended. ( )

Joe Ide pays homage to Raymond Chandler by bringing Philip Marlowe into modern day LA, not as an old man but as a young detective, 10 years into being a private eye. This Marlowe has a complicated relationship with his dad, who’s a legendary LA cop who turned to drink when his wife developed and then died from cancer.

Marlowe’s case in The Goodbye Coast is, on the surface, an investigation into tracking down a runaway teen, stepdaughter of a fading Hollywood starlet, whose husband was recently murdered. It, of course, morphs into a much more complicated case, chock full of pathological characters, foreign mobsters and pathetic Hollywood personalities.

With all that being said, I just could not really appreciate the characters, and was somewhat put off by Ide’s version of Marlowe. It just didn’t work for me, and as a result, I really could have cared less about the plot. Maybe it’s just me, but I just wasn’t all that impressed by The Goodbye Coast. ( )

Prospective readers, attracted by the “A Philip Marlowe Novel” subtitle should be aware that the primary resemblance between this and the Raymond Chandler mysteries featuring a detective of the same name is the setting, Los Angeles. The era is modern, the PI has a father who's a cop and he appears to be financially better off. Whether the noir ambiance is similar is up to the reader. I found the name to be a distraction.

Author Joe Ide writes good dialogue, snappy come-backs and quotable descriptions. His descriptions of the characters is not uniform. I have a clear picture in my head of many of the heavies but I still don't know what Marlowe looks like, nor several of the other protagonists. The story is full of unlikable characters doing unpleasant things, often just because they're rotten people. The primary plot line twists and doubles back admirably. The secondary plot really doesn't have any point other than to complicate the primary plot and add more characters to the mix.

Plenty of blood. Lots of incomplete sentences. I don't remember if that was a Chandler thing or not, it's been a while. Undoubtedly the first in a series. ( )

Alternative Universe Marlowe
Review of the Little, Brown and Company audiobook narrated by Vikas Adam, released simultaneously with the Mulholland Books hardcover (February 1, 2022)

[3.5 rounded up]
The intermittent Philip Marlowe continuation series hasn't received very much attention on Goodreads. GR's series canon only includes Robert B. Parker's completion of Poodle Springs (1989) as #9 and it confuses things by adding Raymond Chandler's short story collection Trouble Is My Business (1939) as #8 and then repeats the story The Finger Man (1934) as if it was #10.

Meanwhile, the Raymond Chandler Estate has authorized several continuation efforts including Parker's Perchance to Dream (1990 - call it Philip Marlowe (PM) novel #9), Benjamin Black's The Black-Eyed Blonde (2014 - PM novel #10), Lawrence Osborne's Only to Sleep (2018 - PM novel #11) and now Joe Ide's The Goodbye Coast (2022 - PM novel #12).

Ide is a good candidate for the continuation as he has made a solid reputation with his urban noir series featuring Isaiah "IQ" Quintabe (2016 to 2021, and ongoing). He makes a radical leap in the character and the chronology of the series though by inventing a contemporary protagonist named Philip Marlowe with no apparent other ties beyond the name to the original iconic hard-boiled detective. Then there is a further twist where the new Marlowe's father Emmett Marlowe, a suspended LAPD veteran, is actually the more hard-boiled character of the two.

So if you can buy into all of that, The Goodbye Coast is a reasonable contemporary noir that does riff on some of the standard Chandler tropes, i.e. the unlikeable client, the femme fatale, the seemingly confusing motives, the apparent random murders, the shady plot behind the scenes etc.

Our present day detective Marlowe is hired to find the runaway wild child 17-year-old daughter Cody of washed up actress Kendra James and washed up film director Terry James. In a subplot he is also enlisted to find the abducted child of Ren, an British divorcee. The best parts of the book were the fireworks between father Emmett and firecracker Cody when Marlowe asks his dad to watch over the wild child and keep her in protective custody while Marlowe tries to sort out the threats to her. The Armenian and Russian mobs put in solid terrorizing cameo appearances. It is all somewhat confused until all the pieces fall into place in the last 25% of the book or so, when it becomes very noir indeed.

So, it is a bit of a mixed bag, it is definitely not your grandfather's (great-grandfather's?) Philip Marlowe, but it is a good contemporary hard-boiled noir fiction regardless. The narration by Vikas Adam in the audiobook edition was excellent.

Trivia and Link
Author Joe Ide was interviewed on February 9, 2022 by the Poisoned Pen Bookstore about his new Philip Marlowe novel and you can watch it on YouTube here. ( )

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
---

“Reassembling the past, reconstructing relationships, trying to link someone's words with the facts at hand or facts yet to be discovered. You overlay a hundred different constructs over the exact same information and you'll come up with a hundred different theories. Everyone sees, interprets and understands things differently. Everyone has their own aspirations, anxieties and fears. It’s what they call human nature.” Basilio paused to search his molars with his tongue. “Don’t get me wrong, kid. I’m not saying it'll all be mundane. There are things inside people so vicious and depraved you'd think their breath would smell like roadkill. They're out there, Marlowe. Every vile infection, mutant species, every simmering brew of psychopathic evil are waiting for you right outside the door.” Basilio unwrapped a toothpick and continued the search. “Sure you're still game?”

That was ten years ago and yes, Marlowe was still game.

MY FAULTY ASSUMPTION
When I heard that Joe Ide was going to do a Philip Marlowe novel, I assumed it was going to be in the same vein as his South Central Sherlock Holmes novel, IQ-this time with a Marlowe-esque figure in a contemporary L.A.

Nope. This time out, Ide isn't messing around with something inspired by one of the greats. He's it's a full bore re-imagining. We've got Philip Marlowe in his tenth year of being a P.I. in a 2020-is L.A. The question is, will this work?

WHAT'S THE GOODBYE COAST ABOUT?
An aging star of Rom-Coms hires Marlowe to find her stepdaughter, a 16-year-old runaway, Cody. Cody's father, Terry, was a director who had one mega-success and a series of flops. He appears to have fallen in with a group of Russian and Albanian gangsters as a way to secure funding for one last attempt at saving his career. Sadly, he was murdered in front of their home. That was six weeks ago. A month later, Cody runs away, stealing the housekeeper's car to do so.

It's been two weeks, and no sign of her has been found. Kendra James hires Marlowe, not to look into the murder, but to track down Cody. Something doesn't sit right about this with Marlowe, but James is paying a ridiculous amount of money, so he takes the case. Marlowe definitely doesn't like James, the way she treats her staff, or spends her money. But that doesn't mean he can't some of that money.

Naturally, Marlowe ends up looking into the murder, and the questions surrounding it, the victim, and Marlowe's client start to add up.

While in the middle of this investigation, Marlowe is approached by a British woman looking for her son—her ex-husband has abducted the boy and flown home to L.A. as the lastest step in their bitter divorce. She's spent pretty much everything she has to get to L.A., and after a series of rejections from Private Investigators who expect to be paid for their efforts, she's been referred to Marlowe.

EMMETT MARLOWE
Marlowe's father, Emmett, is a 17-year-veteran of the LAPD. Currently on leave, following the death of his wife from cancer and the drinking (both excessive and habitual) he turned to after that.

The relationship between father and son is strained, and the closest they get is when they work together—Emmett is essentially Marlowe's partner in some of his cases, unofficially using LAPD resources in the service of the case.

The emotional core of this novel is the relationship between Emmett and Marlowe. There are a lot of ups and downs just in these three hundred pages, and it's clear that this is nothing new—all of this has happened before, and it will all happen again. I'm not sure what they have could be love—it really doesn't seem to be affection—but they're family.

PHILLIP MARLOWE, REALLY?
I'm really not sure about this part. How Phillip Marlowe-y is this guy? Do we need Marlowe in the 21st Century? I wondered about that as soon as I finally understood what Ide was doing in this book a few weeks ago, and at this point in the book, I still have questions about that.

One thing that I stumbled over is Ide's use of the third person. Chandler's Marlowe is notably a first-person narrator—and his narration served as the template for so many P.I.s that followed. Ide is about to work in some touches that make me think of Chandler's narration but it's not the same and takes some getting used to.

There are plenty of similarities between the two author's take on the character, a similar attitude, aptitude, mannerisms, and likes. On the other hand, Ide's Marlowe's backstory and the involvement of his father are significant divergences. That's his prerogative, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that—but at a certain point, if enough tweaks are made, is it Phillip Marlowe?

I cannot stress enough—I would have absolutely no qualms about this character if he had any other name under the sun. But tagging him with Philip Marlowe means something, right? I'm not prepared to say that Ide gave us a version of Chandler's character for the Twenty-First Century. For me, I think I have to think of Ide's Marlowe as some guy who by some crazy, random happenstance shares his name with a P.I. from the same city in the 30s and 40s.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT THE GOODBYE COAST?

A PI didn't have to produce evidence that held up in court. A PI speculated, deduced and conjectured until a theory formed that felt right to an experienced investigator. Marlowe could never replicate [redacted]'s thinking or [their] individual moves. The best he could do was ask himself, How would you do it, Marlowe?

It took me no time at all to get hooked by this—and hooked solidly. If it weren't for prior obligations (like, say, work), I'd have eagerly stayed up all night reading.

Everything about the Cody/Terry/Kendra case is murky—the more time that Marlowe and his father spend on it, the worse it gets. Every time they or the reader think they've gotten to the bottom of what happened, and to the depth of the depravity involved, within a few pages they're proven wrong. By the end, you see that Ide has fully embraced the noir ethos of Chandler's detective and runs with it.

I'm not sure I liked much about the father taking the child story, the resolution was satisfying enough, though. But what I appreciated about it was the way it brought the child's mother, Ren, into the novel. She played a significant role in the Cody story in several ways. Also, the best bit of dialogue in the novel comes from the first conversation that Mom and Marlowe had. I'm a sucker for banter, and Ide nailed this one. If there is a sequel to this, I'd love for Ide to come up with some excuse to bring Ren into it.

Speaking of the dialogue, as a whole it's crisp, snappy, and witty. The characters leap off the page, and it didn't take me long to get invested in the whole thing. This version of L.A. shares a lot with Chandlers, too—the collision of an abundance of wealth and a dearth of ethics/morality helps to create a dynamite setting for a P.I. novel. Between the narrative voice, dialogue, and frequent Chandler-esque similies, this is the most entertaining writing from Ide yet--I'm talking the technical bits, not the character or plot (nothing against them, I'm trying to distinguish things here).

I got the impression this is intended as a stand-alone, but I could be wrong. If there's a sequel, I'm there in a heartbeat. I can see this Marlowe rivaling Isaiah Quintabe in my eyes. P.I. fans—go get your hands on this. ( )