The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

This book was specifically recommended by Michael Chabon, the author of The Yiddish Policemen's Union, as an inspiration for his writing. I'd never read anything by Chandler so I thought I'd give it a try. The writing is excellent and it is the original hardboiled detective novel but I find the world the characters live in ugly and inhospitable. Of course, that's the point and there is redemption at the end because Philip Marlowe, the P.I. , is not bought off. The book is mostly about corruption, moral, spiritual, and physical. Marlowe is the struggling P.I. who befriends a drunk, I'm not sure quite why but he senses some kind of likeness with this man. His involvement with Terry leads him into a series of investigations involving murder, organized crime, police corruption, and sexual impropriety. The characters all struggle with existential angst and it's difficult to stay afloat psychologically without feeling one is naive. Of course, it can just be read as a straight up detective story but it's just a little too edgy to ignore the social commentary. Chandler was writing in the postwar period and reflects the darker undercurrents of that time. So, it's and interesting read but Agatha Christie it's not!

Kya- The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, pub. 1844, 1245 pg. , is at heart an adventure story. The basic plot, based loosely on a true story, is of an innocent sailor on the brink of personal and professional happiness, being betrayed by 3 acquaintances. He is falsely accused of conspiring to bring Bonaparte back to power, condemned to prison , and sent to an awful island dungeon where he remains for 14 years. Most of that time he is in solitary and thinks he will go mad. One day he realizes that the inmate next door is digging a tunnel towards him in an attempt to escape. Eventually the two meet and it turns out the other inmate #27 knows where a fabulous treasure is hidden and when he eventually dies in prison, bequeathes the treasure to our hero #34 otherwise known as Edmond Dantes. Dantes does escape from the dungeon a bitter man bent on revenge. He feels God has given him this vast fortune for the purposes of enacting punishment on those men who wronged him and the people he loved. The rest of the book is taken up with an incredibly complex tale of exactly how he does extract his revenge or God's justice. It's quite an amazing feat that Dumas could conjure up this story and keep the reader's interest for over 1200 pages. Other bloggers advised reading the unabridged and I have to agree. I think the translation I read was quite good because so much emotion and nuance still came through the language. Definitely, a worthwhile read although it took me much longer than I had anticipated.