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Books

What would Raymond Chandler do?

A review of The Kept Girl, A Mystery of 1929 Los Angeles, by Kim Cooper. Cooper goes in search of Marlowe and finds a Californian Maigret

3 May 2014

9:00 AM

3 May 2014

9:00 AM

The Kept Girl, A Mystery of 1929 Los Angeles Kim Cooper

Esotouric Ink, pp.274, £19.99, ISBN: 9780991049400

If the inclusion of the erstwhile master of the genre, Raymond Chandler, as a fictonalised character in a pastiche 1930s detective novel is a bit of a gimmick, it is a nice gimmick. In The Kept Girl it keeps us guessing whether the author, Kim Cooper, believes Chandler’s greatest invention, Philip Marlowe, was a self-portrait, or based on someone he knew.

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