Lawrence Osborne:  Only to sleep – A Philip Marlowe Thriller, 9781781090572, Hardback, Vintage / Penguin Random House UK

It must be a daunting task to follow into Raymond Chandler’s footstep and to write a follow up about the master detective of noir crime fiction, Philip Marlowe. Lawrence Osborne has done a pretty good job in my opinion, capturing the almost suicidal mood of Marlowe in old age giving the book its own voice. The novel flows along in an almost dreamlike quality which made it a perfect summer read for me during the hottest spell of the year. 

Very befittingly the novel is set in Mexico in 1988 where Marlowe is living out his retirement, hitting the booze like he has a second liver to spare, the only female company his housekeeper these days.  When he is visited by two gentlemen from an insurance company at the La Fonda bar, his favorite hangout his retirement comes to an abrupt halt.  Their offer to him: investigate a seemingly accidental death, a job too good to reject since the investigation seems easy enough. Besides his bank account could use some cash injection.

Californian businessman Donald Zinn was washed up dead on a beach in Mexico, apparently after the consumption of considerable amounts of alcohol and some drugs. His much younger widow identified him at a Mexican police station and arranged his immediate cremation making further forensic work impossible for the insurance company. This leaves them with no alternative but to pay out Zinn’s sizable life policy to the young widow.  Marlowe is hired and when visiting Zinn’s widow as a first step of his investigation in California, he learns she is not only beautiful but that he hasn’t lost any of his old detective skills. He soon begins to seriously question whether it was really Zinn who drowned leaving him no choice but to dig deeper and to stir up some trouble amongst people who knew Zinn and his wife in Mexico.