The Endless Sleep-Perchance To Dream-Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep-A Review   

Book Review

By Sam Lowell

Perchance To Dream, Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, 

Funny what will turn up on your summer reading list and why. Sure I am like any other heated, roasted urban dweller and looking for a little light reading to while away the summer doldrums. These days usually I review high-toned literary masterpieces or squirrelly little historical books fit for the academy. But those kind of books cannot survive the summer siege. Which brings us to the genesis of the book under review, Perchance To Dream: Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, a mouthful crime novel, of all things. That is not as condescending as it sounds since long ago I learned the very hard lesson that serious crime writers like Dashiell Hammett, the above mentioned Raymond Chandler, Nelson Algren, Ross MacDonald and a few others, had earned their places in the American literary canon. Their hard-bitten sparse dialogues and plotlines were worthy of emulation.

And that is how in a roundabout way we get to this book. See every year when the doldrums come I automatically reach for a little Chandler or Hammett from my library to see the real deal in order to spruce up (and parse, if possible) my own writing. This year when I did so I noticed a book Poodle Spring by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. This final Philip Marlowe series book was never finished by Chandler before he died in 1959. Sometime many years later showing respect for his own crime novel efforts the Estate of Raymond Chandler hired Parker to finish the book. I have reviewed that effort mostly positively in this space, although personally I was sorry that the old errant knight tilter at windmills Marlowe had gotten himself married to a foxy rich dame who wanted to keep him as her pet poodle out there in the Poodle Springs desert and that he seemed to have lost a step or two as he “matured” in the 1950s twilight. Robert B. Parker, of course is a name known to me as the crime novel writer of the Spenser series of which I had read several of the earlier ones before moving on to others interests. While checking up on what Parker, who died in 2010, had subsequently written I noticed the title under review. Now we are all caught up on genesis.                   

Naturally a sequel is a touchy thing to successfully do, especially if written by a different writer as here. Of course Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep was his first big time Philip Marlowe novel, the one that after writing for years in the pulp crime story market put him over the top. The one, as well, that had two films made out of his storyline, Humphrey Bogart to me the definitive Marlowe on screen in 1942 and a remade with more than adequate Robert Mitchum in the early 1980s. So the storyline, the sense of what could and could not be done with a sequel was pretty tightly circumscribed. Moreover Chandler’s literary credentials as a legitimate member of the American literary canon were established in that book if for nothing else that last couple of paragraphs giving his take on the big sleep much as F. Scott Fitzgerald did in the last couple of paragraphs of The Great Gatsby with the sense of awe at the possibilities the first comers to New York had when they approached Long Island Sound. Most of us could write for a hundred years and never get it right like they got it right in those two instances. So Parker had some big shoes to fill, Chandler devotee and expert or not.

The original storyline bears a little summary for those not in the know, although Parker did a great service by inserting along the way particularly at the beginning of his sequel pertinent sections of the original to give his own story some context. Philip Marlowe, PI, was hired by rich old oilman General Sternwood out sunny LA in the 1930s to look into the matter of some gambling debts, some blackmail attempts  and the whereabouts of his confidante Rusty Regan who had blown town without leaving a forwarding address. Now to mix things up the old codger had a couple of wild daughters, Vivian who had been married to Regan although she didn’t seem to be bothered by his disappearance and a real wildcat, sex and drug crazed one, Carmen, who would bring everyone to grief. Into the mix came a gay pornographer subsequently murdered, a small time grifter looking for the main chance who also was subsequently murdered, and, most importantly, hard-nosed gangster Eddie Mars, who had been making friendly advances at Vivian and her pile of dough. Word around for a candid world to buy into was that Eddie’s wife had run off with old rogue Rusty.          

Well the murders of the pornographer and the grifter solved the blackmail end of things. But then there was that small matter of where the hell was Rusty. Along the way Marlowe went toe to toe with Vivian who has her own stake in the matter and Carmen who threw herself at Marlowe as her kind of strong and ruggedly handsome guy. He rebuffed that advance. The trail seemed cold until Marlowe got word from a straight-shooting guy who paid with his life for doing so from one of Eddie’s thugs that Eddie’s wife was out in the boondocks hiding out. In the meantime Eddie not liking the idea of Marlowe mixing up in his business has let his “hit man,” the same guy who killed the straight-shooter, loose to kill one Philip Marlowe. They wind up meeting at that boondock hideout and it was to be curtains for one Marlowe. Silly thought, no way he, with some help from Eddie’s wife, blew that hit man away.

Mystery solved. Well not quite there was still the matter of what happened to Rusty if he was not with Eddie’s wife. That is where Carmen’s bagful of grief came in, really her off-the-wall mental condition. See Carmen did not like to be brushed off if she wanted something, wanted a man so one day she had Rusty, who had rebuffed her advances, down by the old family oil pumps teaching her to shoot a gun and getting her anger up she blew him away. How did Marlowe find that hard fact out?  The hard way when he brought her down to that same oil pump and she almost wasted him. Sick girl. Sick but rich and to save the old man anguish before he went to his own big sleep he forced Vivian to have her institutionized, or else. Fade out                           

That is where the sequel begins with Carmen in a rest home, sanatorium, funny farm, call it what you may, or rather missing from a rest home although it takes a while to find out whether she is there or not since the well-connected doctor who ran the place was playing it cozy. So once again it was all about Carmen. All about, now that old man Sternwood was mercifully dead, Vivian having to keep her out of mischief, or to try. This time the old retainer Norris brought Marlowe in to find dear sweet innocent when she dreams Carmen. For the sake of the dead old man, his old boss, who was sleeping the big sleep. Vivian had had other ideas, had her fancy man, one Eddie Mars, still the hard-nosed gangster but soft as mush around Vivian, and not just for her dough, trying to find Carmen. No go, nothing but dead-ends and stalls, To each his own though. Eddie have just stuck to his rackets and leave sleuthing to a guy like Marlowe.              

Now back to that doctor who is the key to the whole deal about Carmen being missing and not findable. His “connection,” the thing that made him invulnerable, this super wealthy guy Simpson who owed half the known world and wanted the other half. Nothing new there. What was new, well not new but what drives Parker’s story line was that this Simpson had very strange sexual appetites ranging from sado-mach stuff to snuffing out his ex-lady loves. You know cutting them up as a sexual thrill. Damn. The doctor, to earn his “connected” status, fed mad man Simpson the bait, the girls with the strange sexual habits at his rest home. And guess who was being groomed to be his next conquest, his next victim. Old sexually kinky Carmen who just loved her sweet long gone new daddy.    

For the dead old man’s sake, for Vivian’s sake, for Carmen’s sake, for Norris’ sake, hell for his uneasy ally of the moment one Eddie Mars, if you can believe that, Marlowe had to jump hoops. Found out that Carmen was being held on Simpson’s luxury liner yacht as he was getting ready to “ditch” her. Marlowe, the old errant knight, came swooping down the harbor, alone, and got Carmen the hell out of there after the usual blasting away of a half dozen or so tough guys who fell down like timber at the touch. Eddie, although not needed on this caper, had his back on in the harbor with his small army of gunmen. Strange allies indeed. The whole thing went hush though after the escape guys with billions can plea out mental insanity. The doctor had blown town in the melee. Check this out though once again Marlowe forced Vivian to send Carmen to a nice quiet sanitarium. Jesus, not an ending to provide material for a sequel to the sequel. A good if not great extension of Chandler’s original storyline but at the end I still missed something, something about Chandler’s language, but also something missing like Chandler ruminating in the end about the big sleep we all face.