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From the opening notes of John Cameron's bluesy musical score, we know we're in for an authentic recreation of the 1940s milieu inhabited by Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe. Powers Boothe stars as Marlowe in "The Pencil," the first of five hour-long mysteries produced for the HBO cable service. The detective must fend off a steady stream of syndicate hit men to protect a racketeer "pencilled" for extinction by the mob. William Kearns plays the marked man, evocatively nicknamed "Violets." Also on hand is Kathryn Leigh Scott as the requisite Mysterious Lady. Though the first Marlowe installment to be filmed, "The Pencil" was the third to be telecast; it debuted on April 30, 1983.