A different story than I imagined, much more complicated. I've read in this book that this is his first novel and he put in it some of his previous stort stories. I know only one, and i found it easily. The whole scene with Vivian playing roulette is taken from Finger man almost word for word. I liked it enough, I was even curious to know how it would end, and the descriptions here and there were not too much as to become boring. Maybe it's because it's an old book (1939), I don't know, or maybe it's just the way it works because it's narrated by Marlowe in the first person, so we only get to know what he knows; fact is , it's not clear to me what is really Carmen't problem: she has some kind of addiction, but not alcohol I'd say because she's way beyond what alcohol can do to you. Maybe. Maybe it is alcohol, and it's just a matter of 'how much'. I don't know. Anyway, Marlowe found her, totally naked, with crazy eyes, oblivious to the world and to the just-murdered-man on the floor. They say she has epileptic crisis, but can that make you do things and than forget you've done it? So she has epilepsy and she has a bad addiction to something.. too much money is not good for your health, I've always thought that. Let's try to explain what happens. Old general Guy Sternwood hires Marlowe. Geiger tried to blackmail him and he wants him to deal with the matter. He finds out that Geiger lends pornographic books for money, and is there when he's killed under the crazy spirited eyes of naked Carmen. Her driver had killed him because in love with her. Little criminal Joe Brody has her naked picture and tries to get money out of her sister Vivian. Carmen goes to Joe's house with a gun to get it back, tries to kill him but fails. Marlowe gets the picture back before Joe is killed by another guy, Geiger's boyfriend or something like that. Big criminal Eddie Mars is involved somehow, he has something to blackmail Vivian with and through Geiger had tried to blackmail the old man too, only to find out he could get no money out of him and he had to wait for Vivian to inherit (not very long, anyway, the general's health is not good); Marlowe doesn't yet know the secret Eddie knows and can use against Vivian. The old man also asks him to find his son-in-law Rusty Regan, who disappeared a few months back. The old man was fond of the guy. For all this time Eddie kept him own wife hidden to make the world think that Regan went away with her voluntarily, but Marlowe finds her thanks to information that Joe's old girlfriend gives him for money. Still, no traces of Regan. Young Carmen had got into Marlowe's apartment, so he found her naked on his bed. He refused her strongly, he did not like the corrupted girl at all.
Towards the end, Marlowe gives Carmen back her little gun, and she asks him to teach her to shoot, They drive to an isolated spot, and he puts a target for her to aim at, but instead the crazy girl turns on him and shoots him instead, four or five times, but Marlowe had put blanks in the gun. After that scene she had a crisis, an epileptic fit: he put her in the car and drove her home. He went to talk to Vivian, now knowing everything. She admitted that this was what Eddie had on her, because she asked his help to hide Regan's body after Carmen had killed him. Marlowe suggested that Vivian should have Carmen institutionalized, then he goes away. The final words are nice, I want to copy them here: "what did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep. On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-wig, and I never saw her again"
I like how it ends. Silver-wig is how he called Eddie's wife, who had freed him and helped him, allowing him to shoot a murderer. That was the only time he really used a gun. Throughout the book he had always threatened to use it, but never did. This man here though, he was a dirty murderer, and he killed him. It's not clear if he'll do anything to stop Eddie from blackmailing Vivian or not, and I can't see how he could manage that without killing him, and therefore have a lot of explanations to give to the police. He seems to have no intention of telling the police about Carmen, these last words seem clear about this. Vivian will take her away , end of his role in the matter.
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