#35 in Crime & mystery
The Long Goodbye
- 320
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
- Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel
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Our view
Philip Marlowe is at his most reflective in “The Long Goodbye”, a novel of many intertwined plots and sharp turns. It is the sixth Marlowe book and longer than Chandler’s others, and the author himself called it his best. Some readers find that it drags in places and that the prose slows the reading; others take their time and savour it.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Long Good-bye is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1953, his sixth novel featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe. Some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, but others rank it with the finest of his or any other detective writer's work. Chandler, in a letter to a friend, called the novel "my best book".
Reading order · Philip Marlowe
Full order & progress →- The Big SleepStart here
7.67.6 / 10 - Farewell, My Lovely
7.77.7 / 10 - The High Window
7.67.6 / 10 - Lady in the LakeLady in the Lake–Not ranked yet
- The Little Sister
7.67.6 / 10 - The Long GoodbyeThis book
8.08.0 / 10 - PlaybackPlayback–Not ranked yet
- Trouble Is My BusinessTrouble Is My Business–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.3 across 139 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 49% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Crime & mystery average of 7.6. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.2 | 17 | 12% |
| Hardcover | 8.3 | 122 | 88% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Long Goodbye?
It has 320 pages — shorter than 81% of the ranked books in Crime & mystery.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Crime & mystery — with scores between 7.8 and 8.1, closest to this book.
