Inverarity is not a Scottish village

I think it is essential in reading Chandler's novels that one understands Chandler was far more comcerned with style, phrase, description, and tone than plot. For this reason, certain aspects of parts of all his books possibly leave the astute reader questioning. That said, I think Farewell, My Lovely is one of his two best novels (all the first six are fantastic though) along with The Long Goodbye. Farewell, My Lovely is consistently underpinned with a feeling that I will attempt to describe as a melancholy for 4 or possibly 5 of the characters excluding Marlowe himself. Marlowe's motivations at the beginning of the book — as in at least one other Chandler novel — are basically nothing but old-fashioned nosiness yet once again, he is the solid moral core of the book. I highly recommend all of Chandler's first six books (not Playback).