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The Second Murderer

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

"This is Marlowe."
"Mr. Philip Marlowe?" She asked.
I glanced at the clock. It was exactly eleven am, as if she had been waiting by the
phone for an appointed hour, following someone else's orders to the letter.
"What, d'you think we're a troupe of brothers? There is only me."

It's mid-September, a heatwave has descended on the parched hills of LA and Private Detective Philip Marlowe is called to the Montgomery estate, an almost mythic place sitting high on top of Beverly Hills. Wealthy twenty-two-year-old Chrissie Montgomery, set to inherit an enormous fortune, is missing.

She's a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father, along with his sultry bottle blonde girlfriend, wants her found before that happens. They've hired Anna Riorden, Marlowe's nemesis, too. The search takes them to the roughest neighbourhoods of LA through dive bars and Skid Row. And that's before he finds the body at The Brody Hotel. Who will get to her first, Marlowe, Anne, or the men chasing her fortune? And does she want to be found?

Discover the rest of the inimitable Philip Marlowe series - nine classic Chandler adventures, from The Big Sleep to The Long Goodbye, available now in paperback and eBook from Penguin Books.

©2023 Denise Mina (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Crime Crime Thrillers Detective Fiction Modern Detectives Mystery Private Investigators Thriller Thriller & Suspense

Critic reviews

Denise Mina is an even better writer than Raymond Chandler. She's also a one-of-a-kind storyteller. I'll leave it at that
Denise Mina is crime writing royalty
Mina successfully emulates the language and tone of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled novels featuring P.I. Marlowe in this terrific pastiche. Mina delivers a truly surprising plot. Noir fans will hope Mina returns to the mean streets of L.A. again soon
Denise Mina is the cream of the crop, an author who pushes the crime novel in new and exciting directions
Denise Mina gets to the heart of what crime really is. You feel like you are right there, in all the dark nooks and crannies that her characters inhabit
Denise Mina brilliantly manages to be funny, heart-wrenching, gut-punching and addictive all at once
One of the most talented, most daring, most humane writers of the past twenty years
Mina's storytelling is always vivid and exciting
The Second Murderer, is a pitch perfect, cinematic homage to the master of noir crime fiction, Raymond Chandler, and his timeless hero, Philip Marlowe. Using whip-smart dialogue, and lush, sensual descriptions of the City of Angels, from Skid Row to the mansions of Beverly Hills, Mina's Marlowe faces danger at every turn, with wit, compassion, and bourbon-proof smarts. I loved this book!
What a pleasure to read my beloved Philip Marlowe as imagined by one of my favourite working crime writers. Denise Mina has the vision, wit, and soul to bring Marlowe and the Los Angeles of our noir dreams glimmering darkly to life
All stars
Most relevant
The story is a bit unclear at times (some may say that is similar to Raymond chandler!)

The narration worked really well for me.

I enjoyed this book. Ok, it’s not a classic but it is worth a listen

A pretty decent story

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Brilliant one liners,great dialogue,excellent vocal performance.
Convoluted plot ,which was hard to follow at times....a bit like Raymond Chandler☺

Curate's Egg

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Far from the worst of the new Marlowe novels but also far from the best. The story is rather underwhelming but the first person Marlowe narration is a fair approximation of the original.

Passable

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Philip Marlowe, the honest private eye in a dishonest world, is back in this continuation novel - the first time a female writer has taken on the challenge, and it’s a daunting one. John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black, pulled it off with The Black-Eyed Blonde, perhaps the best of the post-Chandler Marlowe adventures. The bar is high - but Mina’s noir yarn doesn’t disappoint. The Second Murderer is well-constructed and paced, and Mina approximates Chandler’s style in her brilliant descriptive writing about Los Angeles. Some of the similes work better than others. The plotting is just as dense and elaborate as Chandler’s own. But it all ties up neatly - and the closing scenes are beautifully done. Chandler continues to fascinate because his novels focused mainly on character and style. Plot often seemed secondary. Chandler’s The Long Goodbye was an attempt at exploring Marlowe the man, and his loneliness, within the parameters of detective fiction, and it succeeded in expanding them. The difficulty for those taking up the baton now is that they will inevitably tend to focus more on plot - maybe there’s a limit in a continuation novel to what you can do with such an iconic character - and there’s always the risk of lapsing into pastiche, or not quite nailing the original style/voice. That makes it even more gratifying when someone pulls it off, avoiding the pitfalls, as Mina largely does. It’s a relatively short novel. The narration is well done if arguably a little OTT, but it worked for me - and I hope Mina returns to the seedy backstreets of Marlowe’s L.A. soon.

Down these mean streets…

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This is the fourth Marlow novel ‘written in the style of Raymond Chandler’ that I have read. Previous encounters being: Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne read by Ray Porter, The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide read by Vikas Adam and The Black Eyed Blonde by John Banville read by Denis Boutsikaris, the only one so far that could be said to convincingly approach the voice of Raymond Chandler.

The Second Murderer, however, never convinced for one moment, quite possible the writer was trying too hard. I felt no sense of authenticity in the writing, key notes missed almost every time, at no point did I feel I was involved in anything even remotely resembling a Marlow novel. None of this helped by Scott Brick’s breathless, over the top reading, driving the whole enterprise into pastiche.

One to miss.

Disappointing on so many levels.

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