The Second Murderer

Denise Mina reimagines Raymond Chandler's famed and troubled detective Philip Marlowe in this gritty thriller set in 1950s Los Angeles

"This is Marlowe."

"Mr. Philip Marlowe?" She asked.

I glanced at the clock. It was exactly eleven am, as if she had been waiting by the

phone for an appointed hour, following someone else's orders to the letter.

"What, d'you think we're a troupe of brothers? There is only me."

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 Riorden, 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?

Discover the rest of the inimitable Philip Marlowe series - nine classic Chandler adventures, from The Big Sleep to The Long Goodbye, available now in paperback and eBook from Penguin Books.