This small book is one of a series, written in English, for French students reading English literature for their Bac (the French equivalent of A-levels). Most of the other titles covered are classics of British and American literature, but Ruth Rendell’s A JUDGEMENT IN STONE is included as well. The French clearly look at English literature in a way that we do not.

Belaroussi starts with a short biography of Chandler, and then describes the social and moral climate of southern California and its history. She prints a map of greater Los Angeles, marking the significant locations, examines the cover of the Penguin edition, then the main work begins.

The body of this book is a series of chapters which examine each section of the novel in detail. In each chapter she includes a “section watch” to identify significant actions and motifs, a summary of the action, and then a series of questions both on the detail and the literary style. Examples of her questions, such as “The Brasher Doubloon: why is it described so precisely?” and “To what extent does the story of the Cassidy case provoke a change in the interview?” provoke one to think about the incidents of a book that can be read too easily. Dismissive critics quote Chandler’s line “When in doubt have a man with a gun come in through the door” as if he were not constructing his work from the smallest detail upward, but rushing blindly from excitement to excitement with no regard for what had gone before or was to come. I may have missed it, but I have not seen a British or American critical work on any hard-boiled author that examines his work in this detail, pointing out Chandler’s use of foreshadowing and parallelism, for instance.

A final section of the book gives a series of worksheets encouraging the reader to study areas such as the psychological make-up of the characters; the structure of the novel (the number of chapters - is it standard for a hard-boiled novel?), chronology and the passage of time etc; social relationships; and point of view and style. Point of view is given an interesting discussion - all Chandler’s novels have a first person narrator - Philip Marlowe - but is he the implied author as well, Belaroussi asks?

There are a few errors (Belaroussi says THE LONG GOODBYE was Chandler’s last novel, she thinks “hop” refers to the beer flavouring rather than a euphemism for marijuana), but I would be glad to think that A-level students were being encouraged to read literature in this depth. Equally it shows that the methods of literary criticism can be applied to “pop lit” and that both sides benefit from it and I am pleased to have discovered this book.

I bought my copy in a shop in Lyon, but the on-line booksellers should be able to deliver it here in Britain.