He is the youngest of three siblings his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His father worked in a garage and died when Banville was in his early thirties his mother was a housewife. Only Benjamin Black, a modern master of the genre, could write a new Philip Marlowe detective novel that has all the panache and charm of the originals while delivering a story that is as sharp and fresh as today's best crime fiction.īanville was born in Wexford, Ireland. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest families and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.

Marlowe sets off on his search, but almost immediately discovers that Peterson's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Then a new client is shown in: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. It is the early 1950s, Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Channeling Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Black has brought Marlowe back to life for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, California. So begins The Black-Eyed Blonde, a new novel featuring Philip Marlowe-yes, that Philip Marlowe. Traffic trickled by in the street below, and there were a few pedestrians, too, men in hats going nowhere.'

The telephone on my desk had the look of something that knows it's being watched. 'It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving. Raymond Chandler's incomparable private eye is back, pulled by a seductive young heiress into the most difficult and dangerous case of his career

The black eyed blonde