Anthony,
Re your question below:
> Wasn't
> Marlowe an Intel officer in WWII? Or am I
thinking
> of someone else?
There's no mention in the original Chandler canon of Marlowe
ever having been in the service. One of the short story
"pastiches" in RAYMOND CHANDLER'S PHILIP MARLOWE mentions
that he was briefly an infantry non-com (I think it was in
Robert Crais's "The Man Who Knew Dick Bong").
> [Marlowe's] work in
> the DA's office
> supports that as well. A more likely position for
a
> child of wealth than
> as a flatfoot.
Marlowe wasn't a prosecutor, he was a criminal investigator
for the DA's office. A slightly higher form of flatfoot, but
a flatfoot nevertheless. DA's investigators in LA County at
that time had deputy sheriff's commissions. Significantly,
Bernie Ohls starts out as Chief Investigator for the DA's
Office
(and Marlowe's old boss). Later he's transferred to command
the Sheriff's Homicide Squad. By "The Pencil" he's the LA
Sheriff's Department's acting chief of detectives.
Although it was never explicitly stated in the book, in
letters Chandler stated that Marlowe grew up in the small
semi-rural town of Santa Rosa, California, and came from
humble beginnings.
JIM DOHERTY
__________________________________________________ Do You
Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 27 Apr 2002 EDT