Despite its improbable, cantilevered plot, the story seems subdued-relaxed, even. But the literally breath-taking effect of his alpine idyll lingers. At one point, he stops at a rundown outpost and says, “It felt like paradise.” This moment of unaccustomed exuberance doesn’t last: At the lake, he happens upon a dead body, and that discovery leads him inexorably back to the big, bad city. As his Chrysler ascends the mountain roads that lead him north of Los Angeles and toward the lake cabin where the missing women was last seen, Marlowe feels his spirit lift as well. The change of scene, though only temporary, does him good. The search for a perfume executive’s missing wife takes Philip Marlowe away from his normal stomping ground in either seedy Hollywood or corrupt Bay City (Chandler’s stand-in for the corrupt Santa Monica of his time).
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