THE BLACK EYED BLONDE: JOHN BANVILLE'S BENJAMIN BLACK'S RAYMOND CHANDLER'S PHILIP MARLOWE

The English relationship with Raymond Chandler differs from the American. Their perception of Chandler as the English schoolboy he was gives him a certain claim to literary cache that is open to few Yanks. At the same time, it consigns him to the borders of a ghetto from which very few writers escape. Philip Marlowe is, in these terms, a borderline figure himself: not quite as 'intellectual' as, say, a Morse (despite Marlowe's name there's no poetry, no opera in his life, only chess) and his cases are not cleverly constructed crossword puzzles (see my essay on the Guardian's Telegraph Crossword Theory of Crime Fiction here). It was nearly 70 years ago Chandler himself debunked such ideas in a famous essay in the Atlantic Monthly, and now here we are with a Chandler sequel written by the estimable John Banville, using his slightly less estimable Benjamin Black persona. And though Banville is, of course, Irish, it is as if Chandler were still being lifted to the heights of a serious novelist, but at the same time being held back from them; a very clever way of having your criminal cake crime and eating it too.

Because of the first-person narration it is always difficult to separate Marlowe and Chandler, but Banville is if anything better on the latter. His tone is very close to Chandler's, his use of metaphor and simile much more restrained than some of the neo-Marlowes who came along in Seventies, often wafting in on clouds of purple metaphor. In some ways, the tone seems closer to Ross MacDonald's than Chandler's, a little less showy, less self-conscious but more reflective. It flows well, and it should hook even the most discerning Chandler fan very quickly.

It's also a very knowing pastiche, recalling key moments or settings from a number of Marlowe novels (and films), including the detective taking a Mickey Finn, and the inevitable scenes at the private club which hides many secrets. Clare Cavendish, the black-eyed blonde of the title, is a quintessential Chandlerian femme fatale, and as he delves deeper into the mystery he's been hired to solve, and the bigger real mystery that sits behind it, Marlowe finds himself in that classic noirish dilemma, of wanting to know what you know will be wrong for you, and overcoming your resistance to self harm.

But this is where Banville's Marlowe seems a little bit off. It starts with the situation; this story takes place after Marlowe and Linda Loring have, what? established a relationship, but Marlowe falls for Clare like a bozo out of a noir movie. He lacks the intrinsic suspicion and sometimes profound distrust of women that Chandler's Marlowe has, and seems more in schoolboy awe of them, as Chandler's English schoolboy might have been. It's not just that he's closer to the Bogart of the early stages of The Big Sleep (remember in the novel Marlowe's his repulsion when he discovers Vivian in his bed?) than to Marlowe; he's actually closer to Miles Archer in Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. At one point he worries, 'before I'd ruined everything', which sounds more like a high school boy's lament than a lonely private dick's confession.

A couple of moments jarred me. One was when Clare mentions a 'Pascalian wager' and Marlowe asks 'who's Pascal'. Perhaps I missed some irony there, because I'd assume Marlowe would know of Pascal, and I guess his asking 'who' suggests he does. Maybe it's a British thing. So is describing a poured drink as a 'generous measure', something I've only ever heard Brits (not Irish) use. Yanks tend not to measure their booze, especially in detective novels. 

Banville's finale is another thing that will probably be more fun to those who know their Marlowe well. It brings back one of the key Marlowe characters, but if anything the final scenes are underwritten and anti-climactic; Terry Lennox is here and gone too quickly, a prop for a nod. The finale's gathering is like one of those drawing room scenes in a cozy mystery where everything will be made clear, and comes complete with a little Mousetrap-like (or lite) theatrical humour. And then there's the famous Chandlerian guy with a gun his hand walking into the room. I don't wish to add more spoiler than I have, because I liked the book enough to recommend, and enough to think it could have been better. In an odd way, he gets the feel of Chandler's prose better than, say Robert B Parker's Marlowe, but Parker got the feel for Marlowe's story better. Banville's produced the "better novel", perhaps, but it doesn't stand with Chandler's best, whether you judge by the crossword puzzle rules, the literary ones, or indeed Chandler's own. Dulwich College or no.

The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black

Macmillan/Mantle, £16.99 ISBN 9781447236689

note: this review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

VISITING BRIAN MCGILLOWAY'S BORDERLANDS

I decided to start with Brian McGilloway at the beginning, his first Inspector Benedict Devlin novel, Borderlands. It's a story heavy with atmosphere, set in the Christmas season in the eponymous territory where Ireland and Northern Ireland bleed into each other. The corpse of a teenaged girl is found almost straddling the border, but the investigation falls to Devlin and the Garda to lead. But after the killing has ignited some incidents of revenge, the appearance of a second body begins to suggest that something else is going on, and a ring found on the first girl's body further suggests something buried deep in the past.

McGilloway is strong on atmosphere, everything from the awkwardness of Devlin's being tempted by his former school sweetheart, who years ago dumped him for her now more successful husband, to the corruption suggested behind that husband's father's climb to fame. Devlin moves through the estates of Tyrone with the sense of impending doom you might find in American 'dirty realism', and the pressures on his home life are well-drawn. Devlin has that put-upon borderline depressiveness that characterises so many police detectives, but unlike his Swedish or British counterparts, the Wallenders and Faradays and Resnicks, his family life seems only slightly disfucntional, and far from being a social outcast, he's central to the community, which makes the story all the more involving.

But this is also a police procedural, and requires something of an ensemble cast to succeed, and most of the rest of the ensemble are sketched in rather more perfunctorily. This is to be expected, but it's also important when all signs point to one of the team being involved in the crimes.

The story itself is complicated, not to say convoluted, and not only requires Devlin to miss some clues, but to actually walk away from one which a lab man is prepared to give him. But he neither asks the obvious question nor waits for an answer. I considered this somewhat puzzling until I came across this quote from John Banville, about his detective Quirke. 'He's rather stupid, like the rest of us—he misses the point of things, he stumbles over clues, mis-reads people. He's far too dim to be a Philip Marlowe.' Never mind that Marlowe is often somewhat dim himself, Banville's Quirke could just as easily be Devlin, or vice versa. There is a sense that crimes in this world are not really meant to be solved, or if they are solved, not necessarily punished. I read this book while I was in Dublin, and I'm not sure if it represents a particularly Irish, or Catholic view of the world, but that doesn't seem improbable. McGilloway conveys it strongly, and writes it well, so I'll be curious to see in which direction Devlin goes next.

Borderlands
Macmillan New Writing, £9.99 ISBN 9780230020078