Marlowe: A Man for Our Time?

I can’t say that there’s much new information or insight contained in reporter Mike Shuster’s recent profile of classic Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe, which he put together as part of National Public Radio’s “In Character” series. But it’s still fun to spend some quality time with Raymond Chandler’s world-weary fictional gumshoe.

Critic-anthologist Otto Penzler and author Robert Crais both weigh in here on Marlowe’s integrity and compassion, and NPR has assembled a collection of terrific clips from radio and film versions of Chandler’s writing. There are also a couple of excerpts used in this segment from a 1958 BBC Radio discussion between Chandler and James Bond creator Ian Fleming. (If you’d like to find the entirety of their exchange, click here).

You can listen to Shuster’s investigation of Marlowe here.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)