Playback/raymond chandler

Playback is a classic novel by Raymond Chandler, the master of hard-boiled crime.

Stalking the tawdry neon wilderness of forties and fifties Los Angeles, Raymond Chandlers hard-drinking, wise-cracking Phillip Marlowe is one of the worlds most famous fictional detectives.

Playback finds Marlowe mixing business with pleasure - getting paid to follow a mysterious and lovely red-head named Eleanor King.

And wherever Miss King goes, trouble seems to follow.

But shes easy on the eye and Marlowes happy to do as hes told, all in the name of chivalry, of course.

But one dead body later and what started out as a lazy afternoons snooping soon becomes a deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity - and murder.

Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from the first sentence.

(Daily Telegraph).