The story begins outside a fancy club called The Dancers, where a chance encounter with a drunk man named Terry Lennox eventually gets Marlowe mixed up in a world of trouble-a world inhabited by the rich and ritzy of Los Angeles’ elite. Originally published in 1953, it won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1955. The Long Goodbye is Chandler’s sixth Marlowe novel. But because ya gotta read Chandler and Chandler is the best, I came away from it thinking it was just good, not great. The dialogue was smart and quippy, the plot featured many excellent twists, and for all its genre trappings, it was quite literary.

Now, before you do a little PI work yourself and send some goons to help change my mind, chum, hear me out. Discover the first Edgar winner for Best Novel: Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay! And that’s exactly what happened when I read Chandler’s The Long Goodbye (and watched the Star Wars films, for that matter). It’s a shame that things get put on a pedestal like that because the expectations always overreach and cause an expectation for more.

(Similarly, I hadn’t seen any of the Star Wars films until my 20s but could hold my own in any conversation about the films.) I knew Philip Marlowe through and through without having read a single word. Like much of popular culture, after a certain time, the details are everywhere-reviewed, rebooted, interpreted, and imitated. The name carries so much weight in the mystery genre, it’s hard to believe anyone who says they’ve never read any of his works.

The Long Good-bye by Raymond Chandler