More than a year after the events of The Long Goodbye, hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by an unknown client to tail Eleanor King, a beautiful red-head. Tracking her to the resort town of Esmeralda, Marlowe must unravel the truth about Eleanor and his mysterious client before it is too late. Playback was Raymond Chandler's final novel and was published one year before his death.

Since he first appeared in Chandler's The Big Sleep in 1939, Philip Marlowe has come to define our idea of the private investigator. Many of Chandler's short stories and novels featuring the Marlowe character were adapted for film and radio (including 1946 film The Big Sleep, starring Humphrey Bogart), and in 1983, the Marlowe character and many of Chandler's short stories were used as the inspiration for the television series Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. The Philip Marlowe character's popularity was such that Chandler even re-released many of his early short stories, changing the names of the various protagonists to Philip Marlowe.

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