Book Review: Playback: A Graphic Novel

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

Playback: A Graphic Novel     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Raymond Chandler
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Arcade Publishing, $27.95 hardcover, 98 pages

Found guilty of murdering her husband, Betty Mayfield is set free when the judge in the case, seeing how everyone fears her father-in-law, who owns almost everything in this small North Carolina town, overturns the jury’s verdict. Betty flees across the country and across the border on a train, where she meets Larry Mitchell, a brash but charming gigolo. He sets her up with a room at the Royal Vancouver Hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia, a room that just happens to be below the penthouse suite of Clark Brandon, a playboy millionaire with more than a few secrets of his own. When Mitchell turns up dead on Betty’s balcony, Inspector Jeff Killaine is assigned to the case, but soon finds himself drawn to the beautiful woman he’s investigating. Who killed Mitchell, and why? Only Killaine can figure it out.

Playback is based on Chandler’s never-filmed screenplay for Universal Studios, which was presumed lost but recently rediscovered in the studio’s archives. Ayroles’s illustrations capture the film noir feel of the piece in their starkness. You can see what might have become of the screenplay had it actually been filmed.

I’ve never read or reviewed a graphic novel before, being accustomed to seeing the pictures my imagination creates as I read. While the artwork does set the scene, I think it also drains the story of something, perhaps that Chandler style readers of hardboiled detective fiction have come to know so well. The story begins well, but devolves into film noir clichés, which might work on the silver screen, but not so much on the page. For the Chandler fan, though, it’s a worthwhile book.

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM