Ursula K. Le Guin Roger Tillberg/Alamy
On holiday, I swapped science for literature. First, I tried a resurrection: Denise Mina recreates Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe in her new book The Second Murderer. She beautifully captures Chandler’s staccato, witty style, although I found her Marlowe a fraction less admirable than the original. To compare versions, try Chandler’s 1939 book, The Big Sleep, for lines like: “You’re broke, eh? I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”
Then I enjoyed Chester Himes’s 1957 book A Rage in Harlem, a searing work of…
