Chandler's California

Some journeys take years to accomplish. I earmarked this one a decade ago when I read Raymond Chandler's final novel in a single sitting. In Playback, written in 1958, Philip Marlowe boards a train at Union Station, Los Angeles, in pursuit of a beautiful stranger. She alights at San Diego and takes a cab north to the small town of Esmerelda and it is there that the novel unfolds.

Years later I learned ...