You read the first five pages of Only To Sleep, the first ten maybe, and, if you're a Chandler fan (which I am, though not as obsessive as some), you'll be pissed. Not hugely, but a little. You can see, in the arrangements of commas, the pauses, the clipped and bittersweet rhythm of the ink on the page, someone doing a pretty good Chandler impersonation. But you can see the impersonation, and that's the problem ... But then the first chapter closes. Old Marlowe has gotten his call to adventure in the shape of two insurance men who want him to look into a mysterious death. And Osborne walks off with a paragraph that might be one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a year ... Like all great gumshoe novels, there are cavernous depths there that only look shallow from the surface ... It's the kind of book where, when you read it, it turns the world to black and white for a half-hour afterward. It leaves you with the taste of rum and blood in your mouth. It hangs with you like a scar.
The best P.I. stories build slowly and keep the stakes relatively small. Osborne, who worked as a reporter along the border in the early 1990s, knows Mexico well and he passes that knowledge along to Marlowe ... The game is afoot, with just the right amount of reversals and double-crosses. If certain moments seem illogical—well, that too is part of the Chandler oeuvre. The book’s greatest suspense centers on Osborne’s fealty to Chandler’s Marlowe, especially in the description set out in Chandler’s 1950 essay, 'The Simple Art of Murder'...I’m wide open to Osborne’s version of Marlowe, which forces us to wonder at times whether he’s still a man of honor.
The [novel] admirably sidesteps the pitfalls of Chandler-esque pastiche. Nostalgic curiosity has been defenestrated; in its place, a Marlowe we at once know, but have never met before ... Only to Sleep is as much a meditation on aging and memory as it is a crime thriller ... While expansive—and by no means not without twists—Osborne’s story is considerably easier to get one’s head around [than Chandler's]. Taking in a series of Mexican processions and local festivals, in places, it has the feel of a road novel, not a million miles away from Nabokov’s Lolita.
Set in 1988, Mr. Osborne’s absorbing work presents a 72-year-old Marlowe living in a house in Baja California ... The semi-exotic, lushly described Only to Sleep ends with a whimper, not a bang—which seems a fine way to leave an old fictional friend, taking at last a well-earned rest in the sun after having given readers decades of pleasure.
Osborne does a fine job in giving Marlowe a fresh assignment in this evocative, melancholy homage ... The first part of Only to Sleep is a little slow paced. Osborne sometimes overplays Marlowe’s decrepitude, as he dodders around with his cane, his knees wobbly, his joints aching, his restless nights filled with the faces of long-dead cases, most of whom met a violent end. Yet when Marlowe has to fight for his life, he still remembers his moves ... Only to Sleep is more than a detective story. It is also a meditation on aging and how, even in the autumn of a man’s life, he still is driven to pit his skills and courage against dangerous adversaries.
Osborne is the third writer to have resurrected Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe...and his effort may be the best of the lot. Osborne gives us a retired Marlowe, 72 years old and living in Baja California in the late 1980s; things change when two life-insurance agents turn up looking to hire Marlowe to investigate whether one Donald Zinn really drowned in Mexico as reported. Naturally, what he finds in Mexico is a muddle...yet offering the detective plenty of opportunity to muse on the bitter pill of aging ... Osborne’s real triumph here is to create a new style for the septuagenarian Marlowe that seems absolutely right, less florid but even more driven by mordant wit.
In Only To Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel we meet a retired Philip Marlowe living in Baja California in 1988. He is mostly alone, with his memories, a bottle, and a small dog to keep him company ... Marlowe travels north across the border and meets the widow, a world-weary femme fatale. Then he makes his way south, encountering various unsavory sorts, from dubious expats to jaded local fixers. He begins to unravel the mystery, finding his skills are still sharp but occasionally overwhelmed by the past. Even an attempt on his life prompts as much nostalgia as it does wariness.
...Pacific Mutual has recently paid $2 million on a policy for Donald Zinn, recently deceased, but the firm suspects it’s being scammed and that Zinn and his 'widow' are planning to live the high life in Mexico. Marlowe arranges to meet Dolores Zinn, and as one might expect, she’s a generation younger than her husband and fatally attractive. Marlowe soon establishes that Zinn is indeed alive and has assumed the identity of one Paul Linder, who recently died under suspicious circumstances ... The book features intriguing and shady characters, a convoluted and murky plot, and Marlowe’s attempts to remain untainted in a world pervaded by violence and corruption ... While there are obvious perils in what Osborne attempts to do here, for the most part he succeeds in re-creating both a beloved character and a decadent ambience.
One day, two representatives of the Pacific Mutual insurance company call on Marlowe. Donald Zinn, a developer and a Pacific Mutual client, has drowned, apparently accidentally, off the coast of the Mexican state of Michoacán. The company is hoping that it can reduce its financial exposure if Marlowe finds evidence that Zinn, who was heavily in debt, took his own life or was involved in criminal activities. The PI agrees to look into the matter ... Osborne has mastered Chandler’s gift for metaphor (the Pacific Life reps 'bared the teeth of friendly hyenas who have done their killing for the day') and deepens Marlowe’s psyche as he responds to 'a sad summons from the depths of [his] own wasted past.'
