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October 6, 2025 52 mins

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Farewell, My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler is a cornerstone of the noir genre and the Philip Marlowe books, showcasing Marlowe in one of his most memorable cases. The novel’s richly atmospheric prose vividly captures the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, immersing readers in its gritty, dangerous world. Chandler’s exploration of moral ambiguity and flawed characters adds depth to the mystery, elevating it beyond a simple whodunit.

With its sharp dialogue, intricate plotting, and evocative style, the book solidified Chandler’s reputation as a master of noir and influenced generations of crime writers.

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Owen Hill joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.

Owen is a novelist and a poet, and The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story, an omnibus of his crime fiction, was recently published by PM Press. It includes three novels and a short story. Owen coedited The Annotated Big Sleep (Vintage, 2018) with Pamela Jackson and Anthony Dean Rizzuto.

Owen Hill joined us as our guest to discuss Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. Owen is the author of three crime novels, two books of short fiction, and many collections of poetry. He has reviewed crime novels for the Los Angeles Times and the East Bay Express.

In 2005, Owen Hill was awarded the Howard Moss residency at Yaddo. He is co-editor (with Jerry Thompson) of Berkeley Noir for Akashic Press. A memoir, Hands on a Mirror, is also available from Bootstrap Press.

Owen was a buyer at a second-hand bookstore for many years in Berkeley. He is currently an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He lives in Oakland.

Owen Hill is also the author of The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story (PM Press), an omnibus of his crime fiction. It includes three novels and a short story.

Clay Blackburn—poet, book scout, and sometimes detective—cruises the mean, and sometimes not so mean, streets of Berkeley. With his accomplices, a soldier of fortune, a “defrocked” FBI agent, and a smooth and sexy con man, he lives a life of bisexual sensation with a little crime solving on the side. As such, Blackburn is a sly, witty, and more or less reliable raconteur of the last thirty something years of the Bay Area’s radical bohemia and bookselling.

And in the tradition of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh, and Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles, bears uncomfortable witness to Berkeley’s descent from countercultural paradise to neoliberal inferno.

This omnibus collection collects the novels The Chandler Apartments (2002), The Incredible Double (2010), and the previously unpublished Mayakovsky’s Bugatti (2025), and includes the Blackburn short story “Righteous Kill” (2021).


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