The Long Goodbye (film) - Plot

Plot

Late one night, private investigator Philip Marlowe is visited by his close friend, Terry Lennox, who asks for a lift from Los Angeles to the California–Mexico border at Tijuana. He obliges.

On returning home, Marlowe is met by two police department detectives, who accuse Terry Lennox of having murdered his rich wife, Sylvia. Marlowe refuses to give them any information and they arrest him. After three days in jail, the police release him, because Terry Lennox committed suicide in Mexico. It is an open-and-shut case to the police and the press, but the "official facts" do not sit right with Marlowe.

In the meantime, Marlowe is hired by Eileen Wade, the platinum-blonde trophy wife of Roger Wade, an alcoholic novelist with writers' block, whose macho, Hemingway-like persona is proving self-destructive. She asks that Marlowe find her husband, who, despite such regular alcoholic binges and days-long disappearances, now seems to be missing.

In the course of investigating Mrs. Wade's missing-husband case — visiting the sub-culture of "private" detoxification clinics for rich alcoholics and drug addicts — Marlowe learns that the Wades "knew" the Lennoxes socially. He is increasingly convinced that there is more to Terry's suicide and the murder of Sylvia.

Marlowe incurs the wrath of ruthless gangster Marty Augustine, who wants money returned that Lennox owed him. Augustine viciously injures his own mistress just to demonstrate what could happen to Marlowe, saying: "Her, I love. You, I don't even like."

The return of Augustine's money in the nick of time frees Marlowe to take a second trip to Mexico, where he ultimately uncovers the truth of what happened between Terry and Sylvia Lennox.