Playback: A Graphic Novel - Hardcover

Chandler, Raymond; Ayroles, Francois; Benoit, Ted

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559707968 ISBN 13: 9781559707961

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

An adaptation of a Universal Studios script follows the tale of Betty Mayfield, who narrowly escapes the wrath of her powerful father-in-law and conviction for the death of her husband before restarting her life in Vancouver, where she is taken under the wing a wealthy playboy before she is linked to another killing. 12,500 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888. After fighting in World War I, he settled in California, where he became an oil company executive. At the age of 45, he turned to writing and became the uncontested master of hard-boiled American crime fiction. He died in La Jolla, California, in 1959.

From Publishers Weekly:

Chandler's 1948 screenplay was presumed lost until its rediscovery in Universal Studios' archives in the 1980s, although the author had adapted it into a Philip Marlowe novel in the meantime. More recently, a French publisher adapted it into a graphic novel that is now being presented in English for the first time. While the story has down the requisite cynicism, acerbic humor and casual violence of film noir, it lacks the compelling plots and timeless characters of the author's classic scripts. A whodunit centering on Betty Mayfield, a beautiful, doomed woman on the run from a troubled past, Playback starts promisingly enough with tough, brisk dialogue and the unusual Vancouver setting. Yet by the third act the plot is bogged down by its own dejected heroine, as Betty's permanent air of defeat proves more tiring than tragic. Despite Philippe Garnier's assertion in his introduction that the script was passed over due to the vicissitudes of the studio system, it's possible that an unrelenting gloom was the real culprit. Ayroles's art employs a stiff, angular woodblocklike style that does little to capture the dark eddies of Chandler's tale. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1559707968
• ISBN 13: 9781559707961
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120