The High Window: A Novel (Philip Marlowe) [Kindle Edition]

The "High Window" begins one hot day in Pasadena, when "everything that grew was perfectly still in the breathless air they get over there on what they call a nice cool day." If we don't know we are in a Philip Marlowe novel yet, we do as soon as we meet his new client--a wealthy, obese widow named Mrs. Murdock. From the overgrown, dimly-lit sun room where she holds court, she gives Marlowe his latest p.i. assignment. He's to find a rare coin, the Brasher Doubloon, that was stolen from her possession. He's also to find her daughter-in-law, a former nightclub singer named Linda Conquest, who disappeared at the same time as the coin. "A charming girl--and tough as an oak board," Mrs. Murdock tells him, through sips of her port.

Marlowe's search for the pair leads to a tale more dense and tangled than the thick foliage of his client's sun porch. He quickly finds himself enmeshed with a rich gambler and his philandering, showgirl wife; a thug with a frozen eye; and a mortician who delves into politics. Marlowe also has to contend with the police and a man in a sand-colored coupé who keeps tailing him. Then there are the corpses that keep piling up in his path. There's also his client, who has her own share of tightly-bound secrets. A near-invalid who spends her days lying on a reed chaise lounge, Mrs. Murdock still holds an iron grip on her effeminate son and the fragile woman who works as her secretary.

The plot is fast-paced and engrossing, but the real power of the novel lies in the snappy dialogue and beautifully conveyed atmosphere. Chandler's style has been copied endlessly by other writers over the past fifty years, but no one can touch him. Marlowe's is a world filled with hard-eyed Filipinos answering doors, nightclubs named the Tigertail Bar, and women who are "all cigarettes and arched eyebrows and go-to-hell expressions." Even his butterflies take off heavily and stagger away "through the motionless hot scented air."

As with the other Marlowe novels, there's the usual gratuitous wisecracks exchanged with minor characters--the sourpuss maid; the streetwise chauffeur; the old, watery-eyed elevator operator who breathed hard, "as if he was carying the elevator on his back." Despite his cynical words, Marlowe holds a special place in his heart for the losers in the world. He sends cash to a pitiful handwriting expert and takes an inept detective under his wing. "The shop-soiled Galahad," an associate calls him.

For the rest of the characters, however, he has nothing but contempt. A tough man in a tough world, Marlowe doesn't hide his true feelings under a bushel. He describes the gambler's wife: "From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away." His instructions to the portly Mrs. Murdock: "Tell her to jump in the lake...Tell her to jump in two lakes, if one won't hold her."

Chandler's master stroke as a writer is hyperbole. Even his silences are "as loud as a ton of coal going down a chute." He may write with a sledgehammer, but it's the best sledgehammer around.

Still it was a solid 4 star read. I will continue to read more of Raymond Chandler.