THE SECOND MURDERER (2023) ***
by Denise Mina
This hardback edition published by Harvill Seeker, 2023, 245pp
© Denise Mina, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78730-285-3
Blurb: It’s mid-September, a heatwave has descended on the parched hills of LA and Private Detective Philip Marlowe is called to the Montgomery estate, an almost mythic place sitting high on top of Beverly Hills. Wealthy twenty-two-year-old Chrissie Montgomery, set to inherit an enormous fortune, is missing. She’s a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father, along with his sultry bottle-blonde girlfriend, wants her found before that happens. They’ve hired Anna Riordan, Marlowe’s nemesis, too. The search takes them to the roughest neighbourhoods of LA through dive bars and Skid Row. And that’s before he finds the body at The Brody Hotel. Who will get to her first, Marlowe, Anne, or the men chasing her fortune? And does she want to be found?
Comment: Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe continues to fascinate writers and this is the latest continuation novel sanctioned by the author’s estate. Mina is a well-respected writer and manages to evoke the LA of the late 1930s in her prose. However, she lacks, like all who have attempted to continue the author’s legacy, Chandler’s voice. Fortunately. Mina knows this and therefore avoids dialogue and descriptive passages from descending into cliche. She treads a fine line between evoking Chandler and retaining her own voice. The plot, here, is not as involving as in any of Chandler’s novels, as the relatively short page count will testify. The novel will therefore not fully satisfy Chandler purists, but those seeking a brisk and undemanding mystery in the classic hardboiled style will find the book an entertaining diversion.
