If you're a fan of Chandler, you'll adore this; if you also love Denise Mina, it's double joy! With glittering descriptions of Los Angeles' underbelly, a gripping plot, and the revival of Philip Marlowe, it's a beautiful read.

Mina gives homage to Chandler in The Second Murderer and does it very well indeed. The wisecracks are there, the similes and metaphors are as sharp as an assassin's knife and there are plenty of dames for Marlowe to lust after. I think if you are a fan of Chandler you will probably love this book. I feel like I ought to have loved it but I couldn't connect to it at all. Was it trying too hard? Did I just not like the throwback to more sexist times? I'm not sure what went wrong for me but I think in the end it was not what I expected from a Denise Mina novel. She has her own voice. Why use someone else's?

I am sorry not to be more positive about this novel as usually I love Denise Mina's work. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Really not what I was expecting. Like putting on a cumfy pair of slippers. Marlowe’s voice shines through from the get go. Fabulous.

This is quite a step; a real challenge, for any modern author, to capture the world created by Raymond Chandler and the very essence of Philip Marlowe.

I love the original books, cemented and engraved into one’s psyche by countless retelling and through Hollywood’s lens.

Denise Mina is a wonderful writer quite unique in her own way, with a distinctive voice and insight into violence and the criminal world. I would never have expected her to embrace LA and leave Glasgow, even for a holiday. But to take on the persona of Marlowe PI, is not just a bold surprise but a wonderful treat. A departure that will not just enhance her reputation but build and expand Chandler’s legacy to a new audience of modern readers.

Those who follow, owe such a great deal to those who went before in this genre, and Mina has undertaken a magnificent homage to the past by producing something seamless in this canon it could have been found among Chandler’s long lost diaries.

These books are a special read. A squash and squeeze to slip into this forgotten gumshoe world. The scene is set amid a sweltering heatwave, where nothing is really what it seems and Marlowe is both an observer as well as a player.

What irritates him here is that, good as he is, he can’t help feeling he has been played but everybody should know you don’t mess with him. He is a sweetheart with a soft spot for damsels in distress, and although he always trips over them, he didn’t invent the femme fatale. Enjoy!

As LA descends into a heatwave PI Phillip Marlowe is called to the mansion of the mega-rich Montgomery clan. The daughter has disappeared and her father wants her found. he’s willing to pay large to have this done. Marlowe doesn’t want the job, he doesn’t trust the patriarch or his ‘assistant’ but he is drawn in. Now he has to find her and he’s not on his own.
I tried reading the original Marlowe books many years ago and did not really engage so haven’t touched this original noir since. However I am huge fan of modern noir and Mina is the queen! In her hands this short novel is a thing of magic. Sparse, emotional, tightly written and note perfect – but then I can’t really judge if it is authentic, what I do know is that I devoured this in a couple of hours.

It's a brave author that takes a beloved character and creates a new story for them - and that's exactly what Denise Mina has done here with Raymond Chandler's famous private detective, Philip Marlowe.

Marlowe is mulling over a case that he's closed that doesn't feel right when he gets a summons to the sprawling Montgomery estate set high above Beverly Hills. The young heiress to the family fortune, Chrissie Montgomery, is missing and Marlowe is asked to find her. However, her elderly and dying father isn't taking any chances - he's hired another private detective who Marlowe knows well in order to set the rivals against each other in finding his daughter. As Marlowe gets nearer to the truth, a murder is committed and Marlowe has to consider whether Chrissie really is safest returning to her family.

It's been a long time since I read a Raymond Chandler book, but this felt authentic and credible - Mina's Marlowe is a hard-drinking, deep-thinking kind of guy with a sound (if idiosyncratic) moral code. He inhabits the seedier side of Los Angeles, visiting Skid Row and some dodgy bars in pursuit of his aims. He knows everybody, yet trusts few - and is quite happy to use underhand methods to get what he wants. He has a yearning for beautiful women, yet an inability to have a relationship. Sounds quite Chandler-esque to me!

I enjoyed the mystery in this book - it cleverly wound together a lot of threads and the solution was believable and in the spirit of the originals. Chandler's books don't have cosy, happy endings - there is the sense of justice being done, but also that life is messy and imperfect.

I really loved the way that Mina used the settings within the novel so vividly to create an almost cinematic feeling - I could picture the luxury of the Montgomery estate with its tunnel of jacaranda trees as easily as I could imagine the squalor of the Brody Hotel. Characters are also described in filmic detail - a bead of sweat rolling down a face, bloodshot eyes, a cheap suit that doesn't fit. I liked being able to see the detail of Marlowe's world.

The heat described in the novel brings a lot of the tension - there is a restless, hazy, claustrophobic feeling as Marlowe navigates his version of LA. Indeed, the heat adds to the sense that brutality is never far away as tempers fray and characters sweat.

I'd recommend this to fans of Chandler's original books, but also think this brings Marlowe to a new audience - I suspect that Mina's Marlowe is more acceptable to a modern reader than the originals which probably reflect the time in which they were written. Indeed, Mina's Marlowe seems to swerve a lot of the criticism aimed at older texts - racism, sexism, homophobia - but without diluting the impact of the hyper-masculine Marlowe and his tough world. If detective novels are your thing, this is an entertaining, often drily-humorous and lively addition to the Philip Marlowe series.

the second murderer

Denise Mina gives us a very clever pastiche of Raymond Chandler’s epitome of the hard-boiled American private detective, Philip Marlowe. Yet this is a modern version of Marlowe who now has a pronounced feminine sensibility. I could write this review just using all the clever quotes throughout. I often chuckled to myself whilst reading.

Throughout Marlowe is talking to the reader, not just as a first person narrator but as a Humphrey Bogart like voice in your head. Perhaps you needed to have seen this actor’s portrayal of the PI to get this but I have and I could not get his voice out of my head as I read, nor did I wish to as he is telling, describing, ascribing directly to you, as the reader. Wiki describes Bogart as ‘the quintessential Marlowe’ and this is what Mina gives us.

There is a wide cast of characters, many women, but Marlowe is the true focus. The plot seemed secondary to me. The writing is brilliant, gleaming with wit and dexterity:

“I took the hill slow and the city dropped away below, taking the bitter edge of the heat with it. All the filthy intensity fell away. I took the last turn to where the road led straight to the ocean. A gentle breeze slipped in through the windows on either side, slithered under my cuffs, filled my shirt and pushed all the sticky heat up and out of my collar. I decided that I might never leave this hill.”

“The mansion was an L shape with the front door in the crease of the elbow. It was a nice family home if your family was everybody in Kansas.”

A hallway is described as “eighteen-carat cold” and “whoever that was on the phone, she deserved a chance not to fall in love with me. Everybody does and most of them take it.” And when he tells you about a character it is pithy, “There’s a man who will follow drink fifty fathoms down, knowing they have the air to get to the sea bed but not enough to get back up.”

I really enjoyed reading this. Mina is a very versatile writer and this novel is very highly recommended. I read a copy provided by NetGalley and the publishers but my views are my own.

As a fan of Denise Mina, I love all the different approaches she takes in her writing. This latest novel was just as enjoyable and was a quick read. The characters are unique and, along with the lively descriptions, suit the style of the genre.
The intelligent and humour-filled writing kept me turning the pages.
With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this boon.

I'm in two minds about the idea of other contemporary writers taking up a classic series of a great author and writing further adventures in their style in their period, in their world. On the one hand there's always some curiosity to see if they can measure up and even surpass the originals, but a fear that they might just get into a pastiche or even Frankenstein compilation of the original author's riffs. I like Denise Mina though, a good writer who I've fallen long behind with after the first three or four Alex Morrow books. She has also stretched out into adaptations of other author's works, notably in graphic novel versions of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. so - with some reservations - I was happy to give her take on Marlowe a go, hoping that she will bring some of her own character to Marlow and, if lucky, extend or deepen the legend of the most famous PI creation in crime fiction.

So, let's see if this sounds familiar. In The Second Murderer Marlowe is called up by an attractive sounding woman who invites him to a big mansion. The owner, Chadwick Montgomery III, is a very old man, wealthy but ill, who doesn't look like he has too long to live. His daughter Chrissie is missing, having last been seen in the company of 'undesirables', and it's a dangerous world out there for a rich heiress. He and his secretary want the matter handled discreetly, by someone who has a good reputation but is also a loner rather than a big prestigious detective agency. Montgomery offers Marlowe a lot of money, but he isn't interested in all the trappings of high society affairs. He is however interested in the old man's attractive and bruised secretary. There are a lot of familiar tropes there, none of them handled anywhere near as exquisitely as Chandler.

Yeah, it's a convention, we know, but it would be nice if there was an original spin on this kind of set-up, the kind of thing The Big Lebowski parodied so brilliantly. Parody however is the last thing you want in the literary form and happily Mina finds a few reflective notes to consider in Chandler's world, seeing in Chadwick Montgomery III, "a dying man in his room of broken things". She taps into the post-war America, comparing the change in society from old money to new - here in the form of art buyers and sellers - and the corruption mired in both. Where does Chrissie fit into this world? Where does Marlowe? Where does Denise Mina?

Those questions soon ceased to matter as the flow of the book and the writing took on a character and drive of its own. Once the familiar Big Sleep-like setup was delivered, it didn't take too long for me to put aside such concerns, forget who was writing or whether it measured up to the standards I'd set for it beforehand, and just enjoy wandering down these mean streets again with Philip Marlowe.

The plot of The Second Murderer is not too complicated on the surface, certainly less convoluted than the average Marlowe investigation, but the joy is nonetheless likewise in the characterisation, in men and women, in high society and the low society of strip joints, Skid Row doss houses, soup kitchens and dimly lit bars "so low the rats were wiping their feet on the way out". Danger lurks around every corner. Where Mina gets it right, as well as bringing something of her own to the series, is when Marlowe visits Janie Jones' Little Club and ends up in a police drunk tank. Up to then the world at least looked like it had some semblance of order, but after that, established rules about behaviour are exposed and it all goes to hell very fast. The ending is note perfect.

Reading this is like watching a classic film noir, so effective is the realisation of period detail in recreating the dark, seedy setting, secretive sleazy characters and chasm between rich and poor. The character and tone of Philip Marlowe's ironic self-aware narration is perfectly captured. A thoroughly entertaining page turner, which I will be recommending to my book group.

Wow, this is fun! Denise Mina has picked up the Marlowe gauntlet and run with it all the way. She piles on the wisecracking, sharp similes of Chandler, manages to set the mood perfectly in the original’s classic style and produces a murder mystery that takes the best of the hard boiled bottle blondes and marries it with a feminist take.

We first meet Marlowe in his office, drinking at 11am. He’s unsettled by the recent arrest of Black Jack Beau for the murder of Pasco Pete. He’s feeling uneasy; this is a case that looks solid – perhaps too solid – and it just doesn’t feel right to him.

But he’s lifted out of his contemplation by a phone call directing him to a new client. Marlowe is hired by the humongously wealthy Chadwick Montgomery III to look for his missing daughter, Chrissie. Chrissie ran away from home the morning after her engagement party, leaving her young son behind. Chadwick says he’s chosen Marlowe because he knows how to be discreet, but Marlowe is unconvinced. He discovers that Chadwick has also hired Anne Riordan, who runs an all-female detective agency. He instinctively dislikes Chadwick and is dazzled by his companion, Anneliese Lyle.

Marlowe, who knows how his city runs and has contacts in all kinds of low places, does not have to look very far at all to get his first lead on 22 year old Chrissie. She is working under an assumed name and wants no more than to be left alone. But with Anne Riordan also on her trail, Marlowe knows that’s no option.

Marlowe trails Christie to a seedy downtown hotel in Skid Row where he finds Chrissie standing over the dead body of a man. Obviously, nothing is quite as it seems and this case becomes darker and more deadly as Marlowe and Anne Riordan work together to get to the bottom of what turns out to be a decidedly murky affair.

Though Marlowe here is not unwilling to use any means to get his information, Mina nevertheless portrays him as an inherently moral man, who knows how and where to draw the line and will not willingly be corrupted.

In this story the excess of wealth is repugnant and those who have it appear to be already corrupted by it. But it is women who are at the centre of this story and Mina creates a stunning cast of female characters with varying degrees of complicity in the murkiness of this story. I did also enjoy the portrait of Lieutenant Moochie Ruud, a man in the pocket of his superiors, who is frequently to be heard asking ‘do you know who my father-in-law is?

There’s a lot going on and more than one murder will need to be resolved. Mina has her scene setting down to a ‘T’ and this is a highly entertaining, dark and fascinating read that really does showcase the essence of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.

I absolutely loved it.

I have no memory of Philip Marlowe so came to this character with no preconceptions. I have read many of Denise Mina's previous books though.
The writing was clever, the descriptions of the characters painted a vivid picture and there was a great deal of humour to be found. The story itself a real page turner.
Many thanks to Netgalley/Denise Mina/Random House UK for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

Denise Mina’s take on the Raymond Chandler detective books is a good, if dark, read. The descriptions of low life, seedy bars are so detailed you can smell the smoke and taste the liquor. Recommended if you enjoy crime thrillers set in the 1930s USA.

I grew up watching the old B&W Raymond Chandler films on TV. I’m also a huge Denise Mina fan. So, I was so excited to read The Second Murderer.

I loved the premise of the book, Philip Marlowe is pitted against his competition, the private investigator Anne Riordan, and they have 24 hours to find the heiress Chrissie Montgomery.

This seems quite a diversion from Denise Mina’s other books. I really hope she will be returning to 1930s LA and there will be more Marlowe books on the horizon.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK /Vintage for making the ARC available to me in exchange for a fair and honest review.

In the second murderer, Nina gives us her take on Raymond Chandlers private detective, Philip Marlowe.

This book just wasn’t for me, I found it all too familiar and there were too many misses with humour.

I did like Anne Riordans character and would love to see her have a spin off. However I won’t be reaching for another Marlowe story if this becomes a series. I would love to know what made Nina venture into this, Ive enjoyed some of her own novels.

A well crafted recreation of Philip Marlowe in this brave venture away from Mina’s gritty Scottish setting. You are transported to the seedy underworld of LA where Marlowe is asked to find a missing heiress

In Denise Mina’s “The Second Murderer”, the Scottish crime writer gives us her take on Raymond Chandler’s Private Detective, Philip Marlowe.

In 1940s LA, a wealthy heiress has gone missing. Her millionaire father and blonde bombshell girlfriend have hired Marlowe, as well as female detective Anne Riordan, to find her before someone can get their claws into her for their own devices.

It’s a smart story, full of the expected sharp similes (mainly hits, occasionally a miss), and bringing something new with Mina’s modern eye and empathy for her characters. But I did miss Chandler’s rhythm and Marlow’s darker side a little.

I’m curious why Mina has taken on Chandler. They’re big boots to fill. Why not write her own character? Maybe it was partly the same thing that drew me to reading a new Marlow in the first place. What I do know is I loved Anne Riordan’s character and would really like to see a story or two with her as the central private detective.

I’d like to thank @netgalley and @harvillsecker for providing this arc to review in my own words. The book is out on 13 July 23.
#philipmarlowe #raymondchandler #privatedetective #privateeye #privateinvestigator #losangeles #thriller #crimefiction #bookreview #denisemina #scottishwriter #scottishauthor

#TheSecondMurderer #NetGalley
Brilliant story
It's mid-September, a heatwave has descended on the parched hills of LA and Private Detective Philip Marlowe is called to the Montgomery estate, an almost mythic place sitting high on top of Beverly Hills. Wealthy twenty-two-year-old Chrissie Montgomery, set to inherit an enormous fortune, is missing. She's a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father, along with his sultry bottle blonde girlfriend, wants her found before that happens. They've hired Anna Riorden, Marlowe's nemesis, too. The search takes them to the roughest neighbourhoods of LA through dive bars and Skid Row. And that's before he finds the body at The Brody Hotel. Who will get to her first, Marlowe, Anne, or the men chasing her fortune? And does she want to be found?
Thanks to NetGalley and Vintage for giving me an advance copy.

A Denise Mina fan, I have to confess to not having read any of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlow series, but understand they are mid-twentieth century, 'hard-boiled' private eye murder mysteries.
With its LA heatwave setting and laconic atmosphere, sarcastic Marlowe's investigation (his competition, who he is attracted to, has also been hired) into a missing heiress is compelling. The heiress is being hunted by two PIs and numerous gold-digger men, looking for a pay cheque. Well plotted and written, easily identifiable as an accomplished and experienced author, I found this pacy and engaging.
It makes me think I should read the first in Chandler's Philip Marlowe series! Thanks for the opportunity to read an advanced copy.

The plot is as deep and dark as it gets, multi-layered with 'who knew what when?' as the strands come together and the finer details get filled in. This is an absolutely compelling, gripping book full of mystery and suspense. Only a few authors can write deeply involving psychological drama of the very highest quality.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.