Tuesday, Henry Holt Publishing announced that award-winning novelist John Banville will revisit Raymond Chandler’s legendary P.I. Phillip Marlowe.
The Irish author will pen the forthcoming novel under his current pseudonym Benjamin Black. As Black, he has written five novels featuring Quirke, a pathologist in Dublin.
“I love the challenge of following in the very large footsteps of Raymond Chandler,” Banville said. “I began reading Chandler as a teenager, and frequently return to the novels. This idea has been germinating for several years and I relish the prospect of setting a book in Marlowe’s California, which I always think of in terms of Edward Hopper’s paintings. Bay City will have a slightly surreal, or hyper-real, atmosphere that I look forward to creating.”
The novel is being written as part of a deal with the Chandler estate.
