Preview of Playback Summary:

A major theme in Playback is the author's self-conscious treatment of the hard-boiled genre. In the later stages of his career, Chandler frequently expressed his discontent with its limitations, insisting: "From now on I am going to write what I want to write, as I want to write it. Some of it may flop.

There are always going to be people who will say I have lost the pace I had once, that...