A desert gumshoe

JONATHAN LETHEM IS A BIG FAN OF RAYMOND Chandler’s, so it’s not by chance that his new novel, The Feral Detective, begins where Chandler’s The Big Sleep leaves off, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, on the section of old Route 66 called Foothill Boulevard. It no longer looks like it did when Philip Marlowe flirted with death outside a shady garage in the rain. But Lethem found himself called