Somewhere Raymond Chandler is smiling, because this is a beautifully rendered hardboiled novel that echoes Chandler's melancholy at perfect pitch. I loved this book. It was like having an old friend, one you assumed was dead, walk into the room. Kind of like Terry Lennox, hiding behind those drapes.
Stephen King
Banville channeling Chandler is irresistible-a double whammy of a mystery. Hard to think anyone could add to Chandler with profitable results. But Banville most definitely gets it done.
- Richard Ford,
John Banville's convincing imitation of Raymond Chandler's literary detective brings to mind an older Humphrey Bogart . . . What Banville, through Black, brings to Chandler is perhaps an enhanced literary sensibility. His Marlowe is alert to nuances of language.
- Mark Lawson, Guardian
<i>The Black-Eyed Blonde </i>includes winks and nods to ardent Chandler fans, but the book will work as first-rate noir for anyone . . . It's remarkable how fresh this book feels while still hewing close to the material on which it's based.
New York Times
Black (a.k.a. novelist John Banville) has revived Chandler's legendary PI Philip Marlowe in a new adventure that reads almost as well as the real thing . . . Black manages to nail not only Marlowe's voice, but his soul.
Entertainment Weekly
When I heard that Benjamin Black, aka the Man Booker-winner John Banville, had taken on the job, I felt the Chandler estate had plumped for the right man . . . The plot is dead right, and the voice is spot on too . . . that this novel is so enjoyable is a testament to the effectiveness of the formula that Chandler laboured so hard to perfect.
Daily Telegraph
It takes a brilliant writer to make such an unreal character real: Chandler was and Banville is. It's a perfect match . . . Perhaps Chandler could have written a better Marlowe novel, but I can't think of anyone else who could.
Scotland on Sunday
Benjamin Black, author of the Quirke series of crime novels set in Dublin in the Fifties - aka Man Booker Prize-winning John Banville - reveals a knack for channelling the grand master of noir.
Evening Standard
Banville lets us know from the very start of The Black-Eyed Blonde that we are in the safest of hands here . . . An exceptionally effective act of literary ventriloquism and entirely irresistible.
Observer
If anything, oddly, the book is probably better than an actual Chandler: more coherent, and more consistent, more careful. Banville is simply a more elegant writer.
New Statesman