Marlowe is being paid to follow a sad-looking red-head named Eleanor King. Or is she called Betty Mayfield or Mrs Kinsolving? And what is the man with the swift left hook holding over her? Even in a nice little town like Esmerelda there`s no shortage of PIs, cops and bellhops to make a case more difficult, and Marlowe`s overdeveloped sense of justice is getting him into trouble again. Still, at least there`s a blonde with a snooty look and a great pair of legs to take the sting out of things ... Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Philip Marlowe stalked the tawdry neon wilderness of Southern California. There Raymond Chandler`s creation became the most famous fictional detective since Sherlock Holmes; often imitated, never bettered. Read the complete Marlowe novels in Penguin paperback.