Soft-Voiced Big Men

Megan Abbott Image: In The Pink © Keith Proctor 2009 Robert Crais The Sentry: A Joe Pike Novel Putnam, January 2011. 320 pp. $26.95 Late in Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, Philip Marlowe, the inceptive knight-errant detective, receives help from a mysterious stranger. A “big redheaded roughneck” with “violet eyes, like a lovely girl,” Red Norgaard suddenly emerges out of nowhere, provides critical assistance and muscle, then just as quickly disappears—but not before Marlowe reveals more to him about his own private demons than to any other character in the series. “I told him a great deal more than I intended to,” Marlowe admits. “It must have been his eyes.” In the end, Marlowe declines Red’s offer of continued help, saying, “Either I do it alone or I don’t do it.” Red replies, “Sometimes a guy has to.” The detective’s isolation is understood, inviolate. This extended, intensely emotional episode is unlike any other in the Marlowe novels.

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