Raymond Chandler: Farewell My Lovely (Dramatised) recap

Private detective Philip Marlowe encounters the enormous ex-convict Moose Malloy searching for his former sweetheart Velma. The search soon overlaps with another case: Lindsay Marriott hires Marlowe to attend a ransom exchange for a stolen jade necklace, but Marriott is murdered and Marlowe is knocked unconscious. With help from Anne Riordan and despite police suspicion, Marlowe follows the necklace to wealthy Mrs. Grayle, then through psychic Jules Amthor, a corrupt private clinic, and an offshore gambling ship. He ultimately realizes that Mrs. Grayle is Velma, who abandoned her old identity and married into wealth. Marriott and Jessie Florian knew enough to threaten her new life. Marlowe brings Malloy to her, but she shoots him and flees. Later recognized in Baltimore, she kills a detective and herself. Malloy dies devoted to the woman whose secret caused the violence around him.

Private detective Philip Marlowe notices a very large man entering a bar that was once Florian's nightclub. The man is Moose Malloy, newly released after eight years in prison and looking for Velma, a singer who was his sweetheart before his conviction. The club now serves a Black clientele, and Malloy violently forces his way inside, killing the manager before disappearing. Marlowe reports what he saw, but Detective Nulty shows little enthusiasm for the case. Learning that the old Florian's is gone, Marlowe begins tracing its former owner and employees himself. He finds Jessie Florian, the late owner's alcoholic widow. She is evasive about both the club and Velma, while an old photograph and the remnants of the club's records convince Marlowe that she knows more than she admits.

Marlowe's inquiries about Velma are interrupted by a paying client, Lindsay Marriott. Marriott says thieves stole a costly jade necklace from a woman friend and have offered to return it for cash. He wants Marlowe beside him during a secret midnight exchange in an isolated canyon. No thieves appear at the meeting. Instead, Marlowe is struck unconscious, and when he recovers he discovers that Marriott has been beaten to death. Anne Riordan, a perceptive young woman passing the area, finds Marlowe and helps him contact the authorities. Lieutenant Randall takes charge of the murder investigation and treats Marlowe as a possible source of concealed information. The missing jade and Marriott's carefully vague story now form a second mystery alongside Malloy's search for Velma.

Anne Riordan identifies the jade necklace as property belonging to Mrs. Grayle, the glamorous young wife of elderly industrialist Lewin Lockridge Grayle. Marlowe meets the couple at their home. Mrs. Grayle confirms that the necklace was stolen and hires him to recover it, while also making her attraction to him clear. Marriott had moved in wealthy social circles but left few simple explanations for why he handled the supposed ransom. Randall continues to press Marlowe to share everything he learns. The investigation points toward a network in which privileged clients, stolen jewelry, and private confidences may all be connected, but the link to Moose Malloy and Velma remains hidden.

Marlowe follows Marriott's connections to Jules Amthor, a psychic adviser patronized by wealthy people. Amthor avoids direct answers and has Marlowe overpowered. With the assistance of corrupt Bay City policemen, Marlowe is delivered to a secluded institution run by Dr. Sonderborg, where he is drugged and confined. He fights his way out and escapes before the drugs can keep him helpless. The experience makes clear that Amthor's business is protected by violence and official corruption, and that Marriott's work around rich clients was not an innocent sideline. Marlowe returns to the case injured but more determined, while the identities and motives behind both Marriott's killing and the jade theft remain unresolved.

After escaping Sonderborg's institution, Marlowe keeps pressure on every available part of the case. Jessie Florian is found dead, eliminating the person most likely to explain what became of Velma after the nightclub closed. Amthor and the people around him appear to have used privileged information from wealthy clients in schemes involving jewelry, but that criminal operation does not fully explain Marriott's murder or Malloy's movements. Mrs. Grayle remains personally interested in Marlowe while her connection to Marriott raises further questions. Marlowe concludes that finding Malloy may force the separate trails together. His search leads toward Bay City's waterfront and to Laird Brunette, the protected owner of an offshore gambling ship who may be sheltering the fugitive.

Marlowe enlists Red Norgaard, an honest former Bay City officer, to take him secretly out to Laird Brunette's gambling ship. He gets past the ship's defenses and confronts Brunette, persuading him that continued concealment will bring unwanted attention. Brunette agrees to pass a message to Malloy. The waterfront trip gives Marlowe a way to bring the fugitive back into the investigation without relying on Bay City's compromised police. He prepares for Malloy to answer the message, believing that a direct encounter will finally connect the man's search for Velma with the deaths of Marriott and Jessie Florian and with the powerful people surrounding the missing jade.

Moose Malloy comes to the Grayle beach house after receiving Marlowe's message. Marlowe confronts Mrs. Grayle as Velma and understands that she has protected her new identity through blackmail, manipulation, and murder. Malloy still approaches her with affection, but she shoots him repeatedly and escapes. He dies without turning against the woman he spent years trying to find. Mrs. Grayle disappears from California and later works as a singer under another name in Baltimore. When a detective recognizes her, she shoots him and then takes her own life rather than be captured. Lieutenant Randall and Marlowe account for the surviving pieces of the case: the jade affair and Amthor's schemes helped conceal the deeper motive, while Marriott and Jessie Florian died because their knowledge could expose Velma's past. The investigation ends with Malloy, Marriott, Jessie, and Velma all dead.

Marlowe arranges for Moose Malloy to come to the Grayle beach house, where the detective has recognized Mrs. Grayle as Velma, the woman Malloy has sought since leaving prison. Her respectable marriage depends on burying her former identity, and Marriott and Jessie Florian died because they endangered that secret. When Malloy arrives, he approaches Velma without hostility, but she shoots him repeatedly and escapes. Malloy dies still unwilling to condemn her. Velma gets away from California and resumes singing under another name. Months later, a Baltimore detective recognizes her; she shoots him and then kills herself rather than be arrested. Randall closes out the remaining facts with Marlowe. The jade robbery, Marriott's blackmail, Amthor's criminal schemes, and Malloy's search have all converged on Velma's determination to preserve the life she built as Mrs. Grayle, leaving nearly everyone who knew the truth dead.