Perchance to Dream

By: Robert B. Parker

Narrated by: Elliott Gould

The Sternwood family, immortalized in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, is in trouble again. Lovely Vivian's psychotic sister, Carmen, has disappeared from the sanitarium, and Vivian herself has once again fallen into the clutches of the shady underworld character Eddie Mars.

Enter Philip Marlowe, the original tough-but-tender private eye, resurrected by Robert B. Parker, creator of his own phenomenally popular Spenser mystery series. He saved the Sternwoods once before. The question is: Can he do it again?

©1991 Robert B. Parker (P)2009 Phoenix

Critic reviews

"Parker's effort goes beyond pastiche: he uses flashbacks from The Big Sleep daringly and seamlessly, and his terse style (a cop asks for the time of death: 'Any idea when yet?') is flawlessly in Chandler's footsteps. This is dazzling." (Publishers Weekly)

An Under Appreciated Sequel to "the Big Sleep"

What did you love best about Perchance to Dream?

The writing AND narration equally.

What did you like best about this story?

The author, Robert B. Parker, brings Chandler's Philip Marlowe back to life in this sequel to the classic author's first novel.

What does Elliott Gould bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Having played Philip Marlowe in the film "The Long Goodbye" - Gould is comfortable being the narrative voice of this character. In addition to that Mr. Gould is comfortable with silence and pauses and thus presents the story, and voices with good rhythm. Finally, his characterization voices of other men and women are not over the top while still keeping it listenable for the hearer of the audiobook.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

The Sequel to the Big Sleep Continues the Excitement

Any additional comments?

As of 5/22/2013, upon my reporting of this error...the audiobook is falsely advertised as "Unabridged." Clocking in under three hours made me suspicious as did the fast clip of the story. I pulled off my old paperback version and began following along and discovered chunks of the story details and dialogue removed...thus the book is "Abridged." I do not like abridged books, but since there was not another option for this (I don't believe anyone ever recorded an unabridged version) I was happy to listen to it. But for those who want that, beware, this book falsely advertises itself as "Un." This is the reason I took it down one star for my "overall" review.

PARKER CHANNELING CHANDLER

THE MAN WHO TURNED THE HARD BOILED PRIVATE EYE INTO A SENSITIVE MAN OF THE MODREN AGE, STEPS BACK A FEW DECADES AND CHANNELS THE KING OF ALL PRIVATE EYE FICTION, NONE OTHER THAN RAYMOND CHANDLER HIMSELF. AND DOES A DAMN FINE JOB OF IT TOO. THIS IS CLASSIC STUFF FULL OF TOUGH GUY TALK AND ATMOSPHERE, BROUGHT TO LIFE BY ELLIOT GOULD'S DEAD PAN PERFORMANCE AS THE ARCHETYPICAL MARLOW. THE SEEDY UNDERBELLY OF L.A. NEVER SOUNDED SO GOOD AS THIS FAST GEM BY ONE (OR IS THAT TWO) OF THE ICONS OF THE GENRE.

Sorry Elliot I love you but stick to movies

Elliot‘s voice was very monotone no pauses for affect no highs no lows it was as if a lawyer had written a deposition for a criminal and he was reading it for the first time in court.
Just not very believable fortunately it was a short story and I watched it laying in bed after a miserably long day and it quickly put me to sleep Like Marlow after he got hit on the back of the head with a Billy Jack
Anyway I don’t recommend it it was hard to follow a plot because I was so uninterested due to the narration

what a waste

it is not worth the time or money. too short not enough effort or details.

Not Unadbridged

While this was only an average sequel, the major issue I've got with this book is the fact that I brought this thinking it was unabridged as advertised but turns out it is abridged.

Abridged? Probably. Terrible? Certainly.

This book was authorized by Raymond Chandler's estate. Parker made the right decision to move away from Marlowe after this one. Attempting to make a career from writing sequels to novels written in the 1930s is likely a bad idea.

Speaking of bad ideas, copying and pasting the first 20 minutes of this story directly from The Big Sleep's last chapter was the second worst decision made with the development of this book. The audiobook is ridiculously short if you skip the repeated section. Absolutely nothing new was added in, approximately, the first 20 minutes.

The worst decision was failing to create a solid motive for the villains of the story and choosing to swipe the plot of Chinatown (the 1974 film by Robert Towne and Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson). The California water wars was the main story of the film and Perchance To Dream purloined it with no hesitation. At least it took a back seat to the mystery and murders. I can't see Marlowe behaving differently than Gittes did so there's no real gain from Alternate Universing the protagonist.

Elliott Gould is a decent narrator. This recording was made before audiobooks really became a mainstream entertainment medium, so adopting accents and varying pitch or intonation weren't really a thing. A new recording would probably be better.

I'll categorize this book as "Don't bother. It's barely a sequel and mostly a waste of time."