You lied to him and you drank your cyanide like a little gentleman. You died like a poisoned rat, Harry, but you’re no rat to me.
You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.
Very methodical guy, Marlowe. Nothing must interfere with his coffee technique. Not even a gun in the hand of a desperate character.
Trouble is my business, I said. How else would I make a nickel?
Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and went somewhere else.
They don't have gangsters in Bay City. They're all working in pictures.
The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel, but I didn’t move. Not being bullet proof is an idea I had had to get used to.
The living room was still dark, because of the heavy growth of the shrubbery the owner had allowed to mask the windows. I put a lamp on and mooched a cigarette. I lit it. I stared down at him. I rumpl...
The little one-story house was as neat as a fresh pinafore. The front lawn was cut lovingly and very green. The smooth composition driveway was free of grease spots from standing cars, and the hedge t...
The customer was middle-aged, handsomely dressed, and drunk. He wanted to talk and he couldn’t have stopped even if he hadn’t really wanted to talk. He was polite and friendly and when I heard him he...
That's the difference between a champ and a knife thrower. The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently, he can't be sure. But when he can no longer throw the high hard one, he throws...
Suddenly, without any real change in her, she ceased to be beautiful. She looked merely like a woman who would have been dangerous a hundred years ago, and twenty years ago daring, but who today was j...
She was staring after me with an expression she probably would have said was thoughtful.
She thought. It was nice to watch her thinking. She still had her legs crossed, and still carelessly.
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might,if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
She had that fine-drawn intense look that is sometimes neurotic, sometimes sex-hungry, and sometimes just the result of drastic dieting. I
Philip Marlowe, 38, a private licence operator of shady reputation, was apprehended by police last night while crawling through the Ballona Storm Drain with a grand piano on his back. Questioned at th...
On a dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis.
No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective.
Maybe we all get like this in the cold half-lit world where always the wrong thing happens and never the right.