"Trouble is My Business" by Raymond Chandler

This is a collection of four long short stories, or maybe four short novellas?  They have chapters, which inclines me more toward calling them novellas.  Whatever.  This book collects four different cases for Philip Marlowe to solve, how's that?

In "Trouble is My Business," Marlowe is hired to protect a wealthy playboy from a gold-digger, but he discovers that a much bigger, nastier crime than that is waiting just offstage, and he'll have to clear that up too.

In "Finger Man," Marlowe is hired to protect a gambler who visits a rival's casino, and when murder ensues, Marlowe gets framed for it and has to find the real killer before it's too late.

In "Goldfish," Marlowe is hired to find some stolen pearls that have been hidden away for years and years.  He finds them, all right, but there's a twist that I didn't see coming and really liked.

In "Red Wind," a man gets murdered right in front of Marlowe, and since the police can't seem to get anywhere on the case, he solves it himself, along with a related murder.  Marlowe's a little kinder in this one than he's sometimes able to be, which I liked.

These are not my favorite Philip Marlowe mysteries, and the short story format forces Chandler to be a little less fantastic with his prose and descriptions -- I think novels gave him more room to play, which he needed.  Still, this was an absolute treat to read.  I made myself only read one story each day so I could savor the pleasure of reading my favorite author just as long as I could.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for violence, cussing, and innuendo.  Nothing dirty, but it's not a book for kids, either.