Gumshoe’s Resurrection Becomes a Two-Shot Deal

Flashback to the fall of 1989: Seated in a padded booth in a restaurant in Orange before a book-signing for “Poodle Springs,” Robert B. Parker waited for his bowl of bean soup to cool, and speculated whether he would write another novel based on Raymond Chandler’s legendary private eye, Philip Marlowe.

Reviews for “Poodle Springs,” Parker’s completion of an unfinished Chandler manuscript, had already begun filtering in and, in general, they were as hot as his bean soup. “At his very best,” gushed a critic for the New York Times Book Review, “Parker sounds more like Chandler than Chandler himself.”

But the man best known for his popular Boston-based Spenser detective novels wasn’t sure he would resurrect Los Angeles’ most famous fictional gumshoe again.

“Maybe,” Parker mused, “I’ll do another one if this one does well, if there’s pressure to do another one, if the public says, ‘Let’s have more.’ But I won’t keep doing it.”

Flash-forward to January, 1991: Marlowe’s back.

This time around, in “Perchance to Dream,” Parker has placed the private eye in a sequel to Chandler’s 1939 classic “The Big Sleep.” (Parker will sign copies of the new book from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Book Carnival, 870 N. Tustin Ave., Orange.)

To launch his latest Marlowe outing last month, Parker’s publisher, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, hosted an invitation-only screening of the Humphrey Bogart movie version of “The Big Sleep” at Universal Studios.

Cornered next to the roast beef during a post-screening buffet, the author was reminded of his earlier declaration that he wouldn’t keep resurrecting Chandler’s hard-boiled detective.

“This is the last one,” insisted Parker while signing complimentary copies of his new book. Then a grin formed beneath his bushy mustache: “If you see another one, you’ll know I sold out for a big price.”

For him to do another Philip Marlowe novel, Parker later elaborated, it would have to be a deal to which he couldn’t say no.

“I don’t expect that to happen,” he said by phone last week from his new Westwood townhouse where he and Joan, his wife of 35 years, are spending the winter.

“I didn’t do it (‘Perchance to Dream’) for the fun of it, but, in truth, I would have gotten more money to do another Spenser,” Parker said. “We’re talking about quite a lot of money either way. But as a commercial venture, the Spenser books are a better idea. So I don’t expect anyone’s going to come and offer me trillions of dollars to do another” Marlowe book.

Parker good-naturedly declined to confirm or deny reports that he earned $1 million-plus advances for each of his Marlowe books.

“No comment,” he said, laughing. “I love to say no comment. I feel like a President or something.”

Actually, a percentage of his profits from the Marlowe books goes to the Chandler estate, which originally approached him about completing Chandler’s unfinished “Poodle Springs” manuscript (actually only four short chapters).

But money wasn’t the only reason that Parker tackled the challenging task of writing as much like Chandler as the master himself. As for writing a sequel to what is probably Chandler’s most famous book, he said:

“I wanted to see if I could do it. I have been a little flattered that anyone asked me. I always admired Chandler greatly. It’s like lifting weights. If someone asks you, ‘Why do you bench-press 300 pounds?’ (the answer is) ‘I want to see if I can.’ ”

Although he doesn’t read reviews of his own books, Parker was aware that “Perchance to Dream” had been “hammered” by the New York Times, which called it a “pseudo-sequel (that) never amounts to more than a nostalgic curiosity.” He also knew that The Los Angeles Times was equally uncharitable in its review headlined “The Big Snooze.”

But the reviews are mixed. The Chicago Tribune says “Perchance to Dream” is even better than “Poodle Springs,” and Playboy critic Digby Diehl praised Parker’s emulation of Chandler’s voice, saying Parker has “the right cadence, the right images and the perfect flat, hard-boiled tone.”

In writing a sequel to what many feel was Chandler’s finest novel, Diehl surmised that Parker no doubt was “emboldened” by last year’s rave reviews for “Poodle Springs.”

“Yeah, I probably was emboldened by the good press I got on it,” Parker said, adding that the experience of following in Chandler’s literary footsteps “probably made me a better writer.”

Parker said he chose to write a sequel to “The Big Sleep” as his second Marlowe undertaking “in large part because there were enough characters left over from the end. In ‘Farewell, My Lovely’ (Chandler’s own ‘Big Sleep’ sequel), I guess everybody dies. But in ‘The Big Sleep,’ both girls are alive and (wealthy gangster) Eddie Mars is still around.”

(In the 1946 Humphrey Bogart movie version, Mars is killed. But, as Parker emphasizes, “my sequel is to the novel, not to the film.”)

As “Perchance to Dream” opens, Marlowe is summoned back to the house of his deceased client, General Sternwood. Norris, the faithful family retainer, reveals that young Carmen Sternwood, a nymphomaniacal psychotic, has disappeared from the sanitarium she was locked up in at the end of “The Big Sleep.” Older sister Vivian, meanwhile, has become romantically involved with Mars, who had previously tried to bump off Marlowe.

In the three months it took him to write “Perchance to Dream,” Parker only occasionally consulted “The Big Sleep.” “I didn’t so much as refer to it as I had it handy to look up stuff: How tall was Eddie Mars? Where was Marlowe living in those days?”

For readers who haven’t read “The Big Sleep,” Parker uses a portion of Chandler’s book as a prologue and then intersperses italicized passages from “The Big Sleep,” the use of which one critic called both “intrusive and overlong.”

“I was happy with it,” Parker said. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, as they saying goes.”

Parker said writing “Perchance to Dream” wasn’t any easier to write than “Poodle Springs.”

“It was just as hard,” he said, adding that “both were harder to write than the Spenser novels. It’s one of the reasons I don’t want to keep doing it.”

For the time being, at least, Parker has left the mean streets of Los Angeles behind.

He just completed a new Spenser novel, “Pasttime,” which is due out in July, and he has already begun writing yet another Spenser.

“I’m on page 25, the title of which is ‘The New Spenser,’ so far.”