Philip Marlowe is a
Los Angeles-based
private detective created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including
The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; and
The Long Goodbye. Chandler is not consistent as to Marlowe's age. In
The Big Sleep, set in 1936, Marlowe's age is given as 33, while in
The Long Goodbye (set 14 years later), Marlowe is 42. In a letter to D. J. Ibberson dated April 19, 1951, Chandler noted among other things that Marlowe is 38 years old and was born in
Santa Rosa, California. He had a couple of years at college and some experience as an investigator for an insurance company and the
district attorney's office of
Los Angeles County. He was fired from the DA's office for insubordination (or as Marlowe put it, "talking back"). The DA's chief investigator, Bernie Ohls, is a friend and former colleague and a source of information for Marlowe within law enforcement. As with his age, Chandler is not consistent as to Marlowe's height: in
The Long Goodbye he is described as being "six feet, one half inch", while in
Farewell My Lovely Marlowe describes one of his clients, Lindsay Marriott, as having "an inch more of height than I had, which made him six feet one" – meaning Marlowe is six feet tall himself. He weighs about . He is described as having dark hair and a medium heavy build (
Farewell, My Lovely); dark brown hair with some grey and brown eyes (
The Long Good-bye). Marlowe first lived at the Hobart Arms, on Franklin Avenue near North Kenmore Avenue (in
The Big Sleep) but then moved to the Bristol Hotel, where he stayed for about 10 years. By 1950 (in
The Long Good-bye) he has rented a house on Yucca Avenue in
Laurel Canyon and continued at the same place in early 1952 in
Playback, Chandler's last full-length Marlowe novel. His office, originally on the seventh floor of an unnamed building in 1936, is at #615 on the sixth floor of the Cahuenga Building by March–April 1939 (the date of
Farewell, My Lovely), which is on
Hollywood Boulevard near Ivar. North Ivar Avenue is between North Cahuenga Boulevard to the west and Vine Street to the east. The office telephone number is GLenview 7537. Marlowe's office is modest and he does not have a secretary (unlike Sam Spade). He generally refuses to take
divorce cases. He drinks
whiskey or
brandy frequently and in relatively large quantities. For example, in
The High Window, he gets out a bottle of
Four Roses and pours glasses for him, Det. Lt. Breeze and Spangler. At other times, he is drinking
Old Forester, a
Kentucky bourbon: "I hung up and fed myself a slug of Old Forester to brace my nerves for the interview. As I was inhaling it I heard her steps tripping along the corridor". (
The Little Sister) However, in
Playback he orders a double
Gibson at a bar while tailing Betty Mayfield. Also, in
The Long Good-bye, Terry Lennox and he drink
Gimlets; in the same novel he also orders a
whiskey sour and drinks Cordon Rouge
champagne with Linda Loring. Marlowe is adept at using liquor to loosen peoples' tongues. An example is in
The High Window, when Marlowe finally persuades the detective-lieutenant, whose "solid old face was lined and grey with fatigue", to take a drink: "Breeze looked at me very steadily. Then he sighed. Then he picked the glass up and tasted it and sighed again and shook his head sideways with a half smile; the way a man does when you give him a drink and he needs it very badly and it is just right and the first swallow is like a peek into a cleaner, sunnier, brighter world." He frequently drinks coffee. Eschewing the use of filters (see
Farewell, My Lovely), he uses a
vacuum coffee maker (see
The Long Good-bye, chapter 5). He smokes and prefers
Camel cigarettes. At home and at his office (see
Playback) he sometimes smokes a pipe. A
chess adept, he is often described as playing games against himself or setting out and duplicating historical tournament games from books as a means of relaxation or clearing his head. As is typical of pulp fiction private eyes from Sherlock Holmes onward, Marlowe is a bachelor throughout most of the novels. That he has sex with female characters is explicit or implied in each of the novels, but he is also shown resisting various sexual invitations and refusing to take advantage of other sexual opportunities on moral grounds. In
The Long Goodbye the divorced daughter of the press tycoon Harlan Potter, Linda Loring (with whom he has spent one night of passion), asks Marlowe to go with her to Paris, but he declines. Then, at the end of the next novel,
Playback (set some 18 months later), Loring phones him from Paris and asks him again to join her ("I'm asking you to marry me"). Marlowe challenges her to come to him in L.A. instead, implicitly testing her sincerity. In the opening paragraphs of
Poodle Springs he has just married her. ==Marlowe bibliography==