Book Review - さよなら、愛しい人 - レイモンド チャンドラー, 村上 春樹 Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler is another book that I'm reading and listening to in Japanese. What attracted me to this book is that it was translated by Haruki Murakami and at the time I bought it in 2022 there were no other Audible books by Murakami available (at the time of writing 7/2023 there has been quite a few Murakami audiobooks released.) 

This book is a private detective story that follows Phillip Marlowe as he investigates what seems to be a dead end missing person case but soon turns into a double murder case. While I have been primarily reading this book to improve my Japanese the story is quite gripping and there are many twists and turns in it. The language in the book is advanced with many phrases I've had to look up on the way. However with the help of DeepL and the Kindle dictionary I've been able to follow along just about.

Actually, I'm currently on my second reading of this book as I liked the narrator's voice and I thought that reading it a second time I could pick up on things I missed the first time. I've read Murakami's books before and I feel that Chandler and Murakami have similar styles - so if you like Murakami you should like this book. There is definitely a film noir/pulp fiction type atmosphere to this book as the plot follows private detective Marlowe on his way to unravel the mysteries of the cases.

Another reason I choose this book is the length, the Audible audiobook is over 11 hours long so there is plenty of material to get stuck into and much listening practice to be had. Overall Farewell My Lovely has a fantastic narrator, a pulp fiction style and plenty of plot twists. If you like crime novels this could be a very good read for you.  
   

Audible Link - https://bit.ly/3pubFwV

Kindle Link - https://amzn.to/3NWkDw7