The Second Murderer - Denise Mina

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 can't testify to the success or otherwise of the continuation of Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming's most famous characters by modern authors, as I've never even read the originals. Nor Stieg Larsson, as I was never a fan of the original. Of those I have tried; Gyles Brandreth's spin on Oscar Wilde or Peter Ackroyd's pastiche The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde I found well done and entertaining; Stephen Baxter doing HG Wells in The Massacre of Mankind not so much as Brian Stapleford's more imaginative The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires. Chandler's Philip Marlowe in principle I'd prefer to be left alone, having read everything except Poodle Springs and being utterly horrified at Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye movie misstep. If you want to do Chandler though, better not imitate but do your own tribute or updating of the style - like Frankie Boyle in Meantime - as surely everyone with a PI series has drawn from the master to one extent or another.

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 notes: The Second Murderer by Denise Mina has just been published by Harvill Secker. I received a preview eBook copp from Netgallet for review.