i just did something I've been meaning to do for twenty years. I read Poodle Springs, the Philip Marlowe novel begun by Raymond Chandler, left unfinished at his death in 1959, and completed by Robert Parker at the request of the Chandler estate for publication in 1989. Chandler left us only four chapters of this story, in which his detective of seven previous novels and numerous short stories is now married and living in what i presume to be an analogue of Palm Springs, California. I probably left it so long on account of the unlovely cover, a hotchpotch of film noir cliches. Instead I feel it should have conveyed something of the Palm Springs locale and the hero's discomfort at being stuck in it. here's a much happier marriage of book and cover, from Chandler's 1949 novel, The Little Sister. I lifted it from Wikipedia, which describes the plot's opening:


"The story opens when mousy Orfamay Quest walks into Philip Marlowe's office in search of a detective. Orfamay is a "small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses"