From: Helen Krummenacker avona@jps.net
Assigned reading for tonight, any Raymond Chandler novel.
I do actually have a copy of The Long Goodbye but unfortunately it's in French, which I can't translate.
In short, Marlowe deals in chaos. He tries to make things a little less chaotic for his client, and that means a lot of... Beautiful Suffering(?) in the process. He usually goes up against corrupt officials, organized crime, and rich people who can afford bodyguards. This sounds very much like the Federation.
As a PI he's very much caught in the middle, between the Federation and the Terra Nostra, as it were. He represents the values espoused by the establishment but not practiced by them, so in that way he's a bit like Blake (if you care to see Blake in that light). The honest man (or the shop-soiled Sir Galahad, as he was called in The High Window).
Neil