{"id":21313,"date":"2025-11-11T20:12:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T01:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21313"},"modified":"2025-11-11T20:12:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T01:12:49","slug":"the-goodbye-coast-by-joe-ide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21313","title":{"rendered":"‘The Goodbye Coast,’ by Joe Ide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Assuming one wished,<\/strong> for argument\u2019s sake, to reboot Raymond Chandler\u2019s private eye character Philip Marlowe in a modern setting, there is, of course, some precedent \u2013 in the movies. James Garner played him in updated form in 1969. Elliot Gould in 1973. And Robert Mitchum in 1978. But each movie did its best to retain the style of the original books and the essential personality of the main character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why would anyone wish to reinvent Marlowe as a slightly na\u00efve young detective in the 2020s, with a suspended cop for a father?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Philip Marlowe of Joe Ide\u2019s The Goodbye Coast<\/a><\/em> is not a former investigator for the district attorney\u2019s office, but a failed cop. His father, Emmet, is a decorated police detective who went into a tailspin after the death of his wife. Now he\u2019s been suspended and is fighting the bottle, but doesn\u2019t hesitate to wave his badge and strap on his gun when his son needs a hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marlowe gets a referral to a job for a fading female Hollywood star, who wants him to find her missing stepdaughter, who disappeared after the murder of her ex-husband, a has-been director. Marlowe suspects his client\u2019s motives aren\u2019t as advertsied, and he\u2019s soon investigating the ex-husband\u2019s murder, which seems to involve Armenian gangsters. He finds the girl, who does not want to go home, so he stashes her with his dad, who finds himself bickering with her but also growing fond of her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also a subplot about Ren, an Englishwoman who wants Marlowe to help her find her son, kidnapped by his noncustodial father. Marlowe begins to fall in love with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a reasonable plot, if a little complex (and believe me, it gets a lot more intricate than this short synopsis suggests). So what\u2019s wrong with the book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, it\u2019s written in the third person, multiple viewpoints. THAT IS NOT HOW A MARLOWE STORY WORKS. One of the main pleasures we seek in these stories is the \u201cface to face\u201d encounter with Chandler\u2019s meditative, intelligent, compassionate\/cynical, mildly erudite detective. Joe Ide removes that pleasure, replacing it with graceless, rambling description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We love the stories for Chandler\u2019s spare, evocative, quotable prose, like, \u201cHe looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.\u201d<\/em> Author Ide isn\u2019t capable of that kind of writing. He gives us lines like, \u201cHe smelled like a flower show run over by a truck.\u201d What does that even mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler was also great at creating vivid characters. Ide\u2019s characters might be described as vivid, I suppose, but only in terms of incoherence. They act like they have multiple personality disorder, taking bizarre and violent action purely (it seems) to advance the plot. I was tempted (though I know nothing of the author) to wonder if he\u2019s autistic and just doesn\u2019t know how normal people think and act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ide\u2019s Marlowe is also weepy and apologetic when he makes a mistake \u2013 something the real Marlowe was never guilty of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If The Goodbye Coast<\/em> had been offered as a stand-alone, with a main character with some other name, I might or might not have finished it and given it a review. It wouldn\u2019t have been a very good review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But shove this at me with a tag marked \u201cPhilip Marlowe\u201d tied to it, and I feel seriously shortchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do not recommend The Goodbye Coast<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assuming one wished, for argument\u2019s sake, to reboot Raymond Chandler\u2019s private eye character Philip Marlowe in a modern setting, there is, of course, some precedent \u2013 in the movies. James Garner played him in updated form in 1969. Elliot Gould in 1973. And Robert Mitchum in 1978. But each movie did its best to retain … Continue reading ‘The Goodbye Coast,’ by Joe Ide<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5760,2202,2323,5761],"class_list":["post-21313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-joe-ide","tag-philip-marlowe","tag-raymond-chandler","tag-the-goodbye-coast"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21313"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21316,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21313\/revisions\/21316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}