"Playback" by Raymond Chandler

The sixth novel in the Marlowe series, set in Esmeralda, a city near San Diego, a moniker for La Jolla, where Chandler lived during the last years of his life. The novel is weaker than Chandler's other Marlowe works on the account of the simpler plot, no big twist at the end, and actually having some decent and positive characters in it, primarily from the police.

Marlowe is hired to follow a woman, without being given a reason. During the job he goes south to Esmeralda, where he meets a handful of colorful characters: Ex-gangster turned proprietor, a private eye from Kansas City, a few decent and honest cops, a Mexican-Chinese-black immigrant who likes smoking pot and hangs himself after injecting morphine and a gigolo who blackmails his charges for more money.

There are two subplots going on concurrently: one being Marlowe's following the girl, who is in turn blackmailed by the gigolo, and eventually falls for the ex-gangster for whatever reason. The other is the private eye from Kansas City and the gigolo blackmailing the ex-gangster (who's also from Kansas City) to reveal his past to the exclusive and very rich crowd living in Esmeralda.

The novel is adapted from a screenplay of the same name that Chandler wrote some years ago and was rejected by studios. The screenplay was published posthumously and people who've read both usually prefer the screenplay. Towards the end of the novel Marlowe gets a phone call from Linda from 'The Long Goodbye' who's now in Paris for over 1.5 years but still missing Marlowe and staying faithful to their one night they had together in his office. Marlowe tells her he didn't stay faithful to her, as in this book he sleeps with the lawyer's secretary who hired him and also with the woman he was following, Betty (yes, the panties go down fast as usual). Linda says she doesn't care and she loves him and she wants to marry him. Marlowe tells her to come to LA and they will talk. In the next novel 'Poodle Springs' which is Chandler's moniker for Palm Spring, Marlowe and Linda are married and living in Poodle Springs.

I've read this one in non-abridge version, and although indeed a bit weaker than the other Marlowe novels, it still brims with the hard-boiled dialogue, insightful descriptions and shrewd social observations about people and life in SoCal in the 1950s which is the main allure of Chandler's work today.