The Second Murderer: A Philip Marlowe Novel

Acclaimed crime writer Denise Mina is the first woman to recreate Raymond Chandler's infamous detective Philip Marlowe in The Second Murderer, an authorized new mystery that finds Marlowe on the hunt for a missing heiress--and up against a rival PI.

"This is Marlowe."
"Mr. Philip Marlowe?" She asked.
I glanced at the clock. It was exactly eleven am, as if she had been waiting by the phone for an appointed hour, following someone else's orders to the letter.
"What, d'you think we're a troupe of brothers? There is only me."

It's early fall when a heatwave descends on Los Angeles. Private Detective Philip Marlowe is called to the Montgomery estate, an almost mythic place sitting high on top of Beverly Hills. Wealthy socialite Chrissie Montgomery is missing. Young, naive and set to inherit an enormous fortune, she's a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father and his sultry bottle-blonde girlfriend want her found before that happens. Oh, and they've hired Anne Riordan, Marlowe's nemesis--now head of her own all-female detective agency--too.

The search for Chrissie takes Marlowe and Anne from the Montgomery mansion to the roughest neighborhoods of LA, through dive bars and boarding houses and out to Skid Row. And that's all before they find the body at The Brody Hotel.

Who will get to Chrissie first? And what happens to a woman who doesn't want to be found?