Perchance to dream : Robert B. Parker's sequel to Raymond Chandler's The big sleep

Perchance to Dream is Robert B. Parker’s authorized sequel to Raymond Chandler’s incredibly complex novel, The Big Sleep. Parker takes most of the same characters (at least those who were still alive) of Chandler’s epic novel, and spins another (not quite so complicated) tale that captures

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the style and mood of the original. The sequel opens with long quotations from the original to set the scene and remind readers of the original.

It is now a few years after the end of The Big Sleep, and General Sternwood has just died. His older daughter Vivian still lives in the family manse, but the younger sister, Carmen, has been sent off to live at a psychiatric rehab facility—think insane asylum with more luxurious accouterments. When the younger sister mysteriously disappears, the butler (who has been handsomely compensated by the General), calls in Philip Marlowe to find her.

Philip Marlowe, the knight errant private eye, returns in all his depravity and taciturnity. Parker’s own favorite private eye (Spenser, with an “s”) was probably based somewhat on Marlowe. Both are big—Spenser is bigger—and tough, and neither uses his first name very often (in Spenser’s case, never). Parker allows the older sister to call Marlowe “Philip” once, but it comes as quite a surprise to the detective.

Marlowe encounters a few very tough characters (“hard men” in his usage), whom Parker delights in describing. One Mexican in particular is uniquely formidable. As Parker describes him:

“The Mexican had no gun. He’d probably gotten hungry one day and eaten it.”

Or

“I could see my gun in his [the Mexican’s] belt. At least he hadn’t tied a knot in the barrel.”

Parker describes the smile of another character as having “all the warmth of a pawnbroker examining your mother’s diamond.”

While Parker is a master of the light(er) crime fiction genre, this is still a fitting tribute to one of the pioneers of noir crime fiction.

(JAB)

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PLOT OR PREMISE:
In Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep", the reader was introduced to all the main characters -- Sternwood himself, his butler, his two daughters, and a gangster. And of course Marlowe was along for the ride. In this sequel by Robert B. Parker, Philip Marlowe returns to Sternwood

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Manor to solve the case of a missing daughter, Carmen, who disappeared from her much-deserved stay in a sanitarium.
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WHAT I LIKED:
A nice tribute to the Marlowe style, and you get to see Parker's and Chandler's styles side-by-side.
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WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
I found this to be a very strange book to read because of its constantly switching styles. The main text, written by Parker, reads like classic Spenser -- same style, sentence structure, etc. However, there are constant "flashbacks" that show up as classic Marlowe in the style of Chandler. If they were just occasional flashbacks, it might have made for an interesting read, but the constant jumps made it very hard to adjust at times.
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BOTTOM-LINE:
Nice tribute, I hope future Marlowe stories stick to Spenser style
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DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I was not personal friends with the author before he died, nor did I follow him on social media.

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A novel that absolutely did not need to be written. When Parker isn't ripping off Chinatown, he has his hero get all sentimental about the Sternwoods, suggesting Parker did not really understand the point of the original novel which put the Sternwoods at the center of rot and decay, environmental

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and social.

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