This is Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. Copyright G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1989. First Edition. Retail price $18.95, not price-clipped.
"Where the master leaves off, his most gifted discipline begins...In a literary event of international importance, the bestselling creator of the Spenser detective novels completes the last, unfinished novel of the most influential detective writer of them all.
When Raymond Chandler died in 1959, he left behind the first four chapters of a Philip Marlowe thriller. Now, thirty years later, Poodle Springs is published as a full-length work - because of a most unusual, inspired, and wonderfully successful experiment by the man considered the foremost interpreter of the Chandler tradition. Robert B. Parker has brought to vivid life the gritty, gripping world of Chandler and his sleuth, Philip Marlowe, in a book no private-eye aficionado will be able to resist.
Poodle Springs finds Marlowe in as weird a situation as any he's encountered: marriage. The classic loner has wed a rich heiress from the exclusive southern California desert mecca of Poodle Springs. But living in the lap of luxury hasn't made a dent in Marlowe's cynicism - or in his talent for attracting trouble. Although he's been in town for only a couple of hours, he's already back in business, having alienated solid citizens, tangled with the cops, and been hired by a local gangster to find some guy who's skipped out on a gambling debt.
So far so typical, but before Marlowe brings in his man, he'll discover another side of Poodle Springs - a dark and dangerous place uncomfortably close to home, where greed, lust, and desperation drive men and women to lead secret lives - and, failing that, to murder...
Poodle Springs is as complexly plotted, as wise in the wayward paths of human passion as every Raymond Chandler work - with a special, sizzing Robert B. Parker spin. Brash, brilliant, and utterly compelling, this novel blends two superb talents into a heady brew of rare, vintage suspense."
Hardcover book with dust jacket is in excellent, like-new, never-read condition - dust jacket has very minimal wear.
