The Black-Eyed Blonde
A Philip Marlowe Novel
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Narrated by:
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Dennis Boutsikaris
About this listen
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe returns in The Black-Eyed Blonde—also published as Marlowe as by John Banville—the basis for the major motion picture starring Liam Neeson as the iconic detective.
"Somewhere Raymond Chandler is smiling . . . I loved this book. It was like having an old friend, one you assumed was dead, walk into the room."
—Stephen King
"It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving."
The streets of Bay City, California, in the early 1950s are as mean as they get. Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and the private eye business is a little slow. Then a new client is shown in: blond, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover.
Almost immediately, Marlowe discovers that the man's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest and most ruthless families—and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.
“It’s vintage L.A., toots: The hot summer, rain on the asphalt, the woman with the lipstick, cigarette ash and alienation, V8 coupes, tough guys, snub-nosed pistols, the ice melting in the bourbon . . . . The results are Chandleresque, sure, but you can see Banville’s sense of fun.”
—The Washington Post
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Critic reviews
"Dennis Boutsikaris narrates with marvelous aplomb.... [he] nails the cool but inviting tone, the clipped tempo, the razor and the velvet of such a tale. He differentiates between characters without overacting, and does a more than passable female - shades of Lauren Bacall, in fact. This is a perfect weekend listen." (AudioFile)
“A first-rate noir…. [Benjamin Black] does an uncannily good job of filling Marlowe's legendary gumshoes…. It's remarkable how fresh this book feels while still hewing close to the material on which it's based…. Mr. Black has…hit a bull's-eye.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“[Black] has revived Chandler's legendary PI Philip Marlowe in a new adventure…. A perfume heiress hires the shamus to investigate the disappearance of her lover, and the mystery soon opens up under him like a sinkhole…. Black manages to nail not only Marlowe's voice, but his soul.” —Entertainment Weekly
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Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward-heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett’s tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness. A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett invented the noir crime novel.
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Pacing Quick & Plot was Goldilocks
- By Darwin8u on 05-16-12
By: Dashiell Hammett
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Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
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A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
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March Violets
- By: Philip Kerr
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a "brilliantly innovative thriller-writer", Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries set in Nazi-era Berlin that are nothing short of spellbinding. The first book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets introduces listeners to Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture.
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Brilliant Nazi Era Mystery
- By Constance on 05-04-12
By: Philip Kerr
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Laguna Heat
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Laguna: a place where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence - with a fiery vengeance - and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery. It reaches back across 40 years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past.
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Fabulous
- By Stacy on 02-24-09
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China Trade
- The Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Series, Book 1
- By: S. J. Rozan
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Asian American private investigator Lydia Chin knows New York City's Chinatown, its people, and its ways as no outsider ever could. It's a city within a city, a rich melange of smells, sounds, dark shops, and close-knit families - a world all its own. And in all of Chinatown, there is no one like Lydia, who has a nose for trouble, a disapproving Chinese mother, and a partner named Bill Smith who's been living above a bar for 16 years. Hired to find some precious stolen porcelain, Lydia follows a trail of clues from highbrow art dealers into a world of Chinese gangs.
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Main character too immature and unbelievable
- By lindy parke on 05-12-21
By: S. J. Rozan
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Darker Than Night
- By: John Lutz
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Ex-homicide cop Frank Quinn is still reeling in the wake of an elaborate setup that ended his career, but a new case presents a chance to salvage his reputation. A killer dubbed "The Night Prowler" has begun terrorizing the citizens of New York City. With the body count climbing, it's up to Quinn to unlock the mystery of a madman's past and end his bloody reign of terror. But in the city of New York, any one of eight million faces could be that of a killer - or his next target.
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Too much
- By Rex Cannon on 07-20-07
By: John Lutz
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Our Story Begins
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- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
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- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
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For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
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Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
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Blackmail, My Love
- A Murder Mystery
- By: Katie Gilmartin
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Josie O'Conner travels to San Francisco in 1951 to locate her gay brother, a private dick investigating a blackmail ring targeting lesbians and gay men. Jimmy's friends claim that just before he disappeared he became a rat, informing the cops on the bar community. Josie adopts Jimmy's trousers and wingtips, battling to clear his name, halt the blackmailers, and exact justice for the many queer corpses.
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Fine Writing, Beautifully Read
- By CJ on 06-14-15
By: Katie Gilmartin
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Crimes by Moonlight
- Mysteries from the Dark Side
- By: Charlaine Harris - author/editor
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
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In number-one New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris’s "Dahlia Underground,” venerable vampire Dahlia Lynley-Chivers survives an attack by an anti-vampire terrorist group, only to show them they tried to blow up the wrong bloodsucker. Bailey Ruth Raeburn, a ghost assigned to assist humans in trouble, steps into the middle of a marital dispute with surprising twists in Carolyn Hart’s “Riding High”....
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Pleasantly surprised
- By Bonnie on 08-06-11
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The Man with a Load of Mischief
- A Richard Jury Novel, Book 1
- By: Martha Grimes
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
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At the Man with a Load of Mischief, they found the dead body stuck in a keg of beer. At the Jack and Hammer, another body was stuck out on the beam of the pub’s sign, replacing the mechanical man who kept the time. Two pubs. Two murders. One Scotland Yard inspector called in to help. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jury arrives in Long Piddleton and finds everyone in the postcard village looking outside of town for the killer - except for one Melrose Plant....
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Love this series, but FYI
- By DCinMI on 03-29-14
By: Martha Grimes
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Field of Blood
- By: Denise Mina
- Narrated by: Heather O'Neill
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Abridged
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Little Brian Wilcox's murder is the hottest story in Scotland. Every major newspaper crowds its pages with stories examining the crime from every angle. If only Paddy Meehan could get a scoop on the case. A nationally syndicated story would surely launch her fledgling journalism career out of the free local rag she's been working at.
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Wrong Accent
- By Amazon Customer on 04-01-14
By: Denise Mina
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I love Benjamin Black
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What listeners say about The Black-Eyed Blonde
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Matthew Kelley
- 02-04-19
Marlowe Lives!
Dennis Boutsikaris performs Marlowe's first person narrative well. For a good part of the book, I felt I was spending time with an old friend. To be clear, the author does not write like Raymond Chandler, but Marlowe behaves about as you'd expect. The problem with the book is that there is a lot of buildup for a climax that doesn't work. Longtime fans familiar with characters from other Chandler novels are likely to be bothered by it as well, but I won't spoil the ending. This is a book that was pleasant, until it wasn't. The problem is, it could have been so much more!
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- Brustar
- 08-11-14
Close Your Eyes and Marlowe Is (almost) Back
Don't don't be put off by the Chandler fanatics who claim that this is ersatz Chandler and nitpick the tortured metaphors that just keep coming like the gimlets in one of Marlowe's favorite dives.
The convoluted story and Marlowe philosophy are spot on.
Unfortunately, the narrator/actor is wrong for the character. He certainly speaks well; he just doesn't speak like Philip Marlowe. Elliott Gould owns that voice. He understands that Marlowe has seen too many fat cats get away with corruption, and too many nice girls rubbed out for being at the wrong place and the wrong time. He's smoked too many cigarettes, been sucker-punched too many times; and spent too many nights at the station. This author doesn't sound world-weary; he sounds like he's just come back from "senior year abroad" and is eager to tell you about his adventures.
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2 people found this helpful
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- itinerant
- 05-31-14
best Chandler reboot
I've read every Chandler story and novel several times, and looked into every Chandler reboot I could find. This one hits all the right notes. Someone complained about the narrator, but I thought it was just fine. Not a Humphrey Bogart imitation, but a good straightforward read of a well-wrought book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- daniel
- 09-24-20
Great book!!
Loved the book, the narration and story line from start to finish. I wish there was a second book!!
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- gina
- 04-10-23
Really enjoyed this listen
My book club reads books made into movies, otherwise I might not have selected this one. Glad I did. I really appreciated the descriptions and analogies. Put me right into the plot. I slowed the narration to .8 and it felt “more Marlowe.”
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- C.T.
- 10-29-23
Enjoyable Marlowe tale
No one can do Philip Marlowe like Raymond Chandler but Banville does a credible job. His Marlowe is a bit more flawed and tolerant than the one from the books. He's more vulnerable to being seduced but still a knight in sour armor. I like it better than the Liam Nelson movie that inspired me to check it out. I recommend the audiobook version over the written one.
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- Scott
- 03-15-14
The worst narration I've ever encountered
Where does The Black-Eyed Blonde rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
The performance is essentially at the core of an audio book. This is an embarrassing moment in the usually stellar record of audible.com. If you want the the experience of a guy reading the phone book, then this is your book, with the pacing and the inflection of just such an endeavor. This is the only review I've written in some measure of haste- hoping to protect other unsuspecting listeners.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
Primarily, it was the lack of timing. The words were read in a hurried manner lacking any depth or expression. By far, the most disappointing reader I've encountered at Audible.
Any additional comments?
Avoid this title.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Stephen
- 09-08-22
R. Chandler revisited
Excellent narration.
Author captured the essence of Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe without the period accuracy. Chandler captured the time perfectly by having written in it. Author was unable to recreate the casual bigotries of the time that makes Chandler so accurate by not having lived it. Nonetheless, if he writes a follow up Marlowe I’ll happily buy it. Listened straight through in a day.
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- Danny S. Jones
- 03-31-20
Outstanding.
A great storyline, with fleshed out characters and enough wisecracks to remind you it’s Marlowe!
Dennis Boutsikaris is spot-on in his snarkiness(!), pacing & delivery.
He needs to continue his Marlowe, even if it means retreading some early books...
Masterful.
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1 person found this helpful
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- DeAnna
- 03-10-18
So so.
I liked the narrator. The story is a little boring. I am a fan of the series. I thought the author, wanting to stay in the same vane as the original author, was too cautious.
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