'Alcohol is like love, ' he said. 'The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.' Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth? 'Chandler gave birth to a different kind of detective . . . His incisive and illuminating prose reveals California in all its sun-bleached sordid reality' The Times