The Little Brother

Melissa Hill, over at the Irish Crime Writing Facebook page, tips us off to a rather juicy piece of industry rumour-become-fact, which is that John Banville (right), under his crime writing nom-de-plume Benjamin Black, is to publish a Phillip Marlowe novel next year. All the details are here, but it appears that Banville / Black will be writing a full-length Chandleresque tale, set in Bay City, and featuring Marlowe - a novel in the same vein as Robert B. Parker’s PERCHANCE TO DREAM and POODLE SPRINGS.
  Should be very, very interesting indeed, particularly as (a) Banville took a right good lamping for daring to dabble in the dark arts of crime writing when first he donned his fedora as Benjamin Black; (b) Chandler, these days, tends to be lauded more for his romantic stylings than his plots, which is often a charge levelled at Benjamin Black himself; and (c) John Banville’s older brother, Vincent, was the first to introduce the Chandleresque homage to Irish crime writing, back in the early to mid-1990s, with his John Blaine private eye novels.
  Crikey. Cat? Meet the pigeons …