Safe Return Doubtful

First published in Black Mask magazine in 1933

Marlowe receives a visit from his friend, Kathy Horne, who runs the cigar concession at the Mansion House Hotel across the street from his office. Kathy tells Marlowe about the Leander pearl heist. Two valuable pearls worth a quarter of a million dollars that were stolen in a mail train robbery two decades earlier. A man named Wally Sype was convicted of the crime and served time, but the pearls were never recovered. During his incarceration, Sype confided to an inmate named Peeler Mardo that he buried the pearls somewhere in Idaho.

Chandler writes of Kathy Horne..

She was a tall, seedy, sad-eyed blonde who had once been a policewoman and had lost her job when she married a cheap little check bouncer named Johnny Horne, to reform him. She hadn’t reformed him, but she was waiting for him to come out so she could try again. In the meantime she ran the cigar counter at the Mansion House, and watched the grifters go by in a haze of nickel cigar smoke. And once in a while lent one of them ten dollars to get out of town. She was just that soft.

This is the brilliance of Chandler, in setting a scene and describing a character. His writing oozes vibrancy.
As usual, the plot is a wild ride through 1920s LA, but they aren’t the reason to read Chandler. His best work, like this, is populated by wonderful characters in whom we invest, their fate matters to us.

And most of all there is Marlowe, a cynical tough guy with a caring streak on a mission to help some sad-eyed dame, bypassing cops, sifting through the detritus left by others through streets strewn with bodies.

He is the best.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5