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The High Window (Philip Marlowe #3)

4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 · rating details · 5,307 ratings · 220 reviews

A wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortune—the elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers evidence of murder, rape, blackmail, and the worst kind of human exploitation.

"Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude."-- Erle Stanley Gardner

"Raymond Chandler has given us a detective w...more

Paperback, 265 pages

Published July 12th 1988 by Vintage (first published 1942)

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Jan 25, 2012 Dan Schwent rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-and-mystery, 2012

Philip Marlowe is hired to find the Brasher doubloon, a valuable gold coin stolen from its owner. Marlowe trails the owner's daughter in law, thinking she stole the coin. Marlowe's path leads him into a web of murder and blackmail. Will Marlowe be able to find who stole the doubloon without winding up on the pile of corpses left in its wake?

As I continuously mention, noir fiction of this type agrees with me like a bottle of Mad Dog does a homeless man. The High Window, Raymond Chandler's third P...more Philip Marlowe is hired to find the Brasher doubloon, a valuable gold coin stolen from its owner. Marlowe trails the owner's daughter in law, thinking she stole the coin. Marlowe's path leads him into a web of murder and blackmail. Will Marlowe be able to find who stole the doubloon without winding up on the pile of corpses left in its wake?

As I continuously mention, noir fiction of this type agrees with me like a bottle of Mad Dog does a homeless man. The High Window, Raymond Chandler's third Philip Marlowe book, is no exception.

A wise man once said "No one reads Raymond Chandler for the plot." I agree with whomever that wizzened old sage was. Chandler never met a plot he couldn't overly complicate but The High Window is one of his more coherent ones. The search for a stolen doubloon sees multiple men dead and a wealthy family's secrets pulled out of the basement and thrown on the front lawn for all the neighbors to see.

Marlowe is Marlowe. As usual, much of the supporting cast exists mostly for Marlowe to bounce great lines off of and/or have sapping or shooting at him. The Bright family is a bunch of rotten apples one and all.

As I said before, this is one of Chandler's simpler plots but it's still a bit of a mess. It took me a little while to tip to the connection between the dentist and the missing coin. The blackmail angle was well done. Chandler played his cards close to the vest, like always. "It just made me want to climb up the wall and gnaw my way across the ceiling." Marlowe used that line to describe a drink he took. That's how I felt about the plot sometimes.

It's no surprise by now that Chandler's prose is the star of the show. I mentioned in my review of Farewell, My Lovely, that Chandler's prose sometimes reminded me of a gritty P.G. Wodehouse. I've since learned that Chandler spent a lot of his early life in England so that's a little easier to understand now.

While it's my least favorite of the three Chandler books I've read so far, The High Window is still a great read, if for no other reason than to experience Raymond Chandler's prose. Not quite a four but it's an overflowing three star read.(less)

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Feb 20, 2011 notgettingenough rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-fiction, modern-lit, games

Chandler's a real pro. This feels like it tripped off the pen, like his kick from writing it is no less than ours from reading it. His great sense of timing isn't going to work out of context, so you are going to have to take my word for it.

Still...just this, in the middle of describing a character's face.

He had a long nose that would be into things.

I've read this sentence a hundred times now. Savoured it. Fantastic. The guy is sharp as when it comes to building pictures of people, of settings,...more

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May 14, 2012 Janice rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: noir

One thing I can’t stand about Goodreads reviews is the compulsion that so many reviewers have of giving a detailed summary of the plot. Is there anything more dull than reading a poorly written plot summary of a book you’ve already read or want to read? So, I’m not going to discuss the plot here, other than to point out that the plot is wholly irrelevant (which is stating the obvious, to Chandler-afficiandos). Chandler’s plots are always convoluted MacGuffins used as a backdrop for Marlowe to ex...more

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Apr 13, 2008 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-noir

I love Raymond Chandler. And Marlowe, the joke cracking private eye who's tough on the outside and golden on the inside and who would be cliched except he's the original everyone else copied...it's vintage noir, hard-boiled action, the world without frills, a trail of murders and blackmail and robbery. It's flawed the way America's underbelly is flawed but it's always clear where Marlowe's sympathies lie...with the poor, the lost, the wicked, the desperate doing all they can to get out of povert...more

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May 08, 2013 meeners rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

now THIS is an example of a writer whose prose has some bite to it!

The room beyond was large and square and sunken and cool and had the restful atmosphere of a funeral chapel and something of the same smell. Tapestry on the blank roughened stucco walls, iron grilles imitating balconies outside high side windows, heavy carved chairs with plush seats and tapestry backs and tarnished gilt tassels hanging down their sides. At the back a stained-glass window about the size of a tennis court. Curtaine...more now THIS is an example of a writer whose prose has some bite to it!

The room beyond was large and square and sunken and cool and had the restful atmosphere of a funeral chapel and something of the same smell. Tapestry on the blank roughened stucco walls, iron grilles imitating balconies outside high side windows, heavy carved chairs with plush seats and tapestry backs and tarnished gilt tassels hanging down their sides. At the back a stained-glass window about the size of a tennis court. Curtained french doors underneath it. An old musty, fusty, narrow-minded, clean and bitter room. It didn't look as if anybody ever sat in it or would ever want to.

there's a bit in here where marlowe lambasts the detective fiction genre, but i think he's more like poirot than he would care to admit. marlowe is a constant cataloguer, perpetually noting and marking and judging the things he sees (probably despite himself), and that's where so much of the pleasure of reading comes from - in the way he sees, in the way he judges. like poirot, too, he keeps his cards close to his chest - perhaps in a less ostentatious manner, especially because of the first-person narration, but again, that's precisely why philip marlowe books are so satisfying - the inevitable denouement in the end may surprise the reader (again, like a traditional detective novel), but the logic (or dare one say...the clues) behind it is built so seamlessly into the narration that it almost inspires delight, to have it uncovered. only 3 stars for the usual historical ugliness, but an enthusiastic 5 stars for the prose. and damn, what a prose!

The skin was icy. It couldn’t have been icy. I just thought it was. I straightened up and leaned my back against the door and made hard fists in my pockets and smelled the cordite fumes. The baseball game was still going on, but through two closed doors it sounded remote.

I stood and looked down at him. Nothing in that, Marlowe, nothing at all. Nothing for you here, nothing. You didn’t even know him. Get out, get out fast.

but of course he never does. it's an odd testament to an even odder sense of justice, and god help me but i love it. (less)

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Feb 21, 2013 Justin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Raymond Chandler is just flat-out fun to read, as I discovered in this "The High Window," the first book of his I've read. In Philip Marlowe he's created the quintessential lovable jerk - not an "anti-hero" by an stretch, but a man who while acting as the protagonist ends up antagonizing everyone he comes across, and it's definitely a big part of his appeal to me. My ultimate impression of "The High Window" is that it was an excellent vessel for Marlowe to bemoan his circumstance with an endless...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Julie Hayes rated it 5 of 5 stars

Marlowe goes to Pasadena to meet a client about a job. First he has to get past the secretary. Miss Davis is a rather meek soul, who asks for his references, and once they check out, she takes him to see the client—Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock. Mrs. Murdock is a large, hard woman with an unpleasant attitude, one that isn’t above haggling Marlowe about what his expenses consist of. The situation is this—something of value has been stolen from her, and she suspects the culprit to be her daughter-in-law...more
Marlowe goes to Pasadena to meet a client about a job. First he has to get past the secretary. Miss Davis is a rather meek soul, who asks for his references, and once they check out, she takes him to see the client—Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock. Mrs. Murdock is a large, hard woman with an unpleasant attitude, one that isn’t above haggling Marlowe about what his expenses consist of. The situation is this—something of value has been stolen from her, and she suspects the culprit to be her daughter-in-law, the item in question being a very rare and valuable coin known as a Brasher Doubloon.

Mrs. Murdock didn’t know the coin was missing until she received a suspicious phone call from a dealer named Morningstar making inquiries as to whether the coin was for sale. The thing is that any reputable dealer would know the coin isn’t for sale, per the stipulations of the late Mr. Murdock’s will. Then she checked and found out the coin was missing. She figures it was an inside job, as those are the only people who would have access to it. Mrs. Murdock wants the coin back, but she doesn’t know where her son’s wife went—plus she wants a divorce arranged. Marlowe agrees to take the case, and is handed back to the secretary to get his retainer—along with a little information, some voluntary, some not so. He learns that Linda Murdock, formerly Linda Conquest, once roomed with another girl named Lois Magic. And he learns that the secretary, Merle, has quite a thing, in her own quiet way, for Mrs. Murdock’s son, which includes keeping his monogrammed handkerchief in a drawer, as well as a small caliber pistol.

As Marlowe leaves the Murdock residence, he notices a sand-colored coupe that seems to be following him. But he could be wrong about that.

Marlowe returns to his office, and while he’s thinking about the case, he receives a visitor—Mr. Leslie Murdock, the son. He’s trying to find out why Marlowe’s been hired, but the PI is too cagey to divulge that bit of information. Murdock reveals more than he learns—namely, that he still loves his wife, and that he is into a guy named Morny for some big money, maybe twelve grand. Marlowe sends him on his way, and calls up Morningstar, making an appointment to see him at his office at 3 o’clock.

He can’t find Lois Magic in the phone book, so he uses a connection to learn what he can about Morny. Turns out he married Lois Magic. Small world indeed. He gets an address and heads over there, but the hired help say she isn’t at home. Well, there’s more than one way to do things, so Marlowe does it his way, and finds out from the chauffeur that Mrs. Morny is indeed at home, in the backyard, along with Mr. Vannier.

Marlowe runs into the sand-colored coupe and its driver again, and confronts him. The guy breaks down and admits he’s been following Marlowe. His name is Phillips and he’s also a PI, working a case. Maybe they can work it together, since the cases seem to be related. He makes a time for Marlowe to come over to his place, and just for insurance, he gives him a key, in case he arrives first.

Marlowe shows up, but it’s too late for Phillips.

And he’s only the first stiff.

Fake coins, missing wives, cheating wives, terrified secretaries, and a body count that just won’t quit. All in the job description for Phillip Marlowe.

The High Window is the third book in the Philip Marlowe series. I liked it as much as I did the others. Chandler has a way with words that is truly unique, and he paints a vivid picture of the times and the people, drawing memorable characters. I like that Marlowe has layers, and we see more and more of those layers as time goes on. In this story, he’s a real gentleman. We already knew he was honest. The story has all the ingredients of a good mystery—dead bodies, people with secrets, lies, and mysteries. I look forward to reading the next book.
(less)

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Jan 15, 2012 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not certain anybody does the typical hard-boiled private eye better than Raymond Chandler. Marlowe is clever, witty, snippy, and persistent. He continues to stumble over dead bodies, damsels in distress, and tough criminal types. He inserts his nose firmly into a high society family's business and refuse to butt out. This time around there is some funny business with a rare coin and Marlowe trods along until he sees it resolved.

I think that there are better mysteries out there, but I believ...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Steffan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Having read a lot of Raymond Chandler through the years and now, finally going back and re-reading everything with a more widened perspective on the genre, The High Window easily stands out as his finest work.

The High Window, unlike a lot of genre Private Detective stories, which so many other authors have spent lifetimes struggling to copy and coming up short, keeps you guessing until the very end. Some authors give you a nibble about half way through a story and it falls apart in your lap and...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-thriller

I have a tendency to forget parts of a Chandler plot, not because they are rather formulaic, even though Chandler was the creator of the formula, but because I enjoy reading him for his witticisms and the way he puts words together. For example:

P45 “A long-limbed languorous type of showgirl blond lay at her ease in one of the chairs, with her feet raised on a padded rest and a tall misted glass at her elbow, near a silver ice bucket and a Scotch bottle. She looked at us lazily as we came over th

...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Jesse rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011, mystery, hard-boiled

Had an overwhelming craving for a dose of Chandler's sordid urban poetry and opted for this, one of his novels that I've read only once. Promptly proceeded to devour it within the course of 36 hours. Usually not considered one of the highlights of Chandler's compact oeuvre, about halfway through it struck me how difficult it is to distinguish between "great" Chandler and the "merely good," as this is really terrific stuff.

But after finishing it became clear again why this isn't one of Chandler's...more

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Nov 26, 2010 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars

Philip Marlowe, LA and Chandler’s #1 PI, gets a call from the wealthy widow Mrs. Murdoch. It seems she wants him to go find her trashy daughter-in-law and retrieve the gold Brasher Doubloon her husband left for her in his will (never to be sold).

Marlowe finds there is more to the story than meets the eye. Mrs. Murdoch will not let Marlowe interview her son and is not to go to the police. But the police come to Marlowe after he discovers a dead body - or two - or three.

Also involved in this hun...more

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Jul 04, 2010 Jerry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Typical Chandler: Philip Marlowe in seedy plot but great writing!

We're catching up on Chandler's private-eye Philip Marlowe novels published in the 1940's, having read "Poodle Springs" (his last work, actually finished by Robert Parker) and "The Big Sleep", his first and perhaps most well-known entry in the set, possibly due to the movie with Humphrey Bogart. The book is classic Chandler: beautifully descriptive prose almost wasted on the seedy characters that populate the storyline. The plot ki...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mysteries

It has been many years since I read any of Raymond Chandler's Marlowe novels, but seeing The Brasher Doubloon (1947) over the weekend made me want to re-read the novel on which it was based. It was good to see Marlowe again, working for another high suspect and dysfunctional rich family (as in The Big Sleep). There is a family secretary named Merle Davis, who is afraid of being touched and who believes that, years before, she had murdered her employer's husband.

There are also the usual collecti...more

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Dec 05, 2010 J. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, noir-environs, la-la-land, chandler

The bar entrance was to the left. It was dusky and quiet and a bartender moved mothlike against the faint glitter of piled glassware. A tall handsome blond in a dress that looked like seawater sifted over with gold dust came out of the ladies room, touching up her lips and turned toward the arch, humming.
The sound of rhumba music came through the archway and she nodded her gold head in time to it, smiling. A short fat man with a red face and glittering eyes waited for her with a white wrap over...more The bar entrance was to the left. It was dusky and quiet and a bartender moved mothlike against the faint glitter of piled glassware. A tall handsome blond in a dress that looked like seawater sifted over with gold dust came out of the ladies room, touching up her lips and turned toward the arch, humming.
The sound of rhumba music came through the archway and she nodded her gold head in time to it, smiling. A short fat man with a red face and glittering eyes waited for her with a white wrap over his arm. He dug his thick fingers into her bare arm and leered up at her.
A check girl in peach-bloom chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins ...

Synonymous by now with the treacherous L.A. Underbelly he chronicled, Chandler was hardly a wide-eyed youth encountering his first acidic taste of noir as he wrote. By the time of The High Window, he'd emigrated to Europe and back again, after school in England and a swing around the continent in place of college. He would see trench warfare with a Canadian unit, dabble with a British Admiralty position, and go into flight training with the RAF. So when orchestrating his large and ramblingly tragic narratives, it is with a clear eye, and maybe only the slightest touch of a hangover, that Chandler sights up his most unbelievable character : LA itself.

Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago,it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full-corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through, the once glossy fisnish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and with cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles ...

The novels that make his reputation, Farewell My Lovely, The Big Sleep, The Lady In The Lake and The Long Goodbye as well as this one-- were to Chanlder some kind of cathartic penance, it would seem. Apt comparisons to Dante have been made, though Dante doesn't require any strings of clues or dubious alibis to proceed. In Chandler there is the sense that all the plot machinations in the universe are simply a dodge, something to distract the inquisitive from the main task at hand. Which is to say the revealing and documenting the million stories of the Damned, living in the various smoggy circles of The City Of The Angels.

Poisonous ennui, untrustworthy characters, twisted motives and unreliable ground rules are the markers of the midcentury noir-fiction style. The sense of foreboding and treachery in Chandler's style manages to convey the uneasiness with which Americans entered the modern world, set in the multi-cosm of LA, itself perched on seismic uncertainties moral and physical.

Noir seems to be the orphan child of the true-crime pulps, the onset of the coldwar, and the chilly modernism of the Ionesco and Beckett school. It is also the link between the thriller / murder story of the early part of the century, and the geopolitical espionage novel, to be seen in Ambler and Greene.

But time for all that fancy-schmancy stuff later, pal. When it's time, you gotta answer the bell .....

"I got a shoulder holster out of the desk and strapped it on and slipped a Colt .38 automatic into it, put on hat and coat, shut the windows again, put the whiskey away, clicked the lights off and had the office door unlatched when the phone rang.
The ringing bell had a sinister sound, for no reason of itself, but because of the ears to which it rang. I stood there braced and tense, lips tightly drawn back in a half grin. Beyond the closed window the neon lights glowed. The dead air didn't move. Outside the corridor was still. The bell rang in darkness, steady and strong.
I went back and leaned on the desk and answered. There was a click and a droning on the wire and beyond that nothing. I depressed the connection and stood there in the dark, leaning over, holding the phone with one hand and holding the flat riser on the pedestal down with the other. I didn't know what I was waitng for.
The phone rang again. I made a sound in my throat and put it to my ear again, not saying anything at all.
So we were there silent, both of us, miles apart maybe, each one holding a telephone and breathing and listening and hearing nothing, not even the breathing.
Then after what seemed a very long time there was the quiet remote whisper of a voice saying dimly, without any tone :
"Too bad for you, Marlowe."
Then the click again and the droning on the wire and I hung up and went back across the office, and out."(less)

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Jan 14, 2013 Shai-Hulud rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-literature, detective

Este foi meu primeiro livro de Raymond Chandler e seu detetive Philip Marlowe. Em A Janela para a Morte (The High Window), Philip Marlowe é chamado por uma mulher rica para investigar o sumiço de uma moeda antiga e valiosa de sua coleção. Aquilo que começa como uma investigação amena vai se deteriorando ao curso da trama com uma sucessão de cadáveres que traz à tona uma série de chantagens, interesses espúrios e possíveis motivações díspares pelos personagens.

Parece-me que o que difere a nova es...more

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Jun 24, 2010 Patrick O'Neil rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was talking with a friend about detective noir mysteries of the 40's and how then it was a genre that was taking a chance, dealing with dark/tough subject matter and social issues, and that's why I find it appealing. It was somewhat like the beat generation writers were to the 60's, or what dope fiend memoirs are today. She agreed and said it was a venue that allowed the reader into a dark subculture that was intriguing, dangerous, and for the most part unattainable – and then she went one fur...more I was talking with a friend about detective noir mysteries of the 40's and how then it was a genre that was taking a chance, dealing with dark/tough subject matter and social issues, and that's why I find it appealing. It was somewhat like the beat generation writers were to the 60's, or what dope fiend memoirs are today. She agreed and said it was a venue that allowed the reader into a dark subculture that was intriguing, dangerous, and for the most part unattainable – and then she went one further and said, "like all those damn vampire books and movies that are so popular right now." TV shows like True Blood and book/movies like Twilight, where it's borderline necrophilia, outright violent, with heavy suggestions of danger. Or non-vampire stories such as cable shows like Breaking Bad where laws are definitely broken, but the characters are justified in doing so. Because for most people it's an escape into a fantasy that blurs morals, laws and values. They desire the forbidden fruit, they want the seduction, and then they want to go home and live their "normal" lives. Except for some it gets all messed up. They start dressing the part and living the dream. Norwegian Black Death metal bands killing each other and setting fire to churches. Kids in the suburbs going all gangster, getting "thug life" tats and capping domes. And I don't even want go off on that strange-ass Dungeons and Dragons weirdness of the 80's. But I'm getting a little off subject here – okay, a lot off. Yet what I'm trying to say is that what makes a writer like Raymond Chandler interesting is he used the genre to write books like The High Window - where he was able to broach sensitive subjects for the times - like mental health, child/sex abuse, racism, and extra curricular sex under the guise of a "detective mystery." It was a genre that allowed that. The subject matter was dark, and it didn't hold anything back. But it does leave me wondering if Chandler were a writer today what genre would he have chosen? Would he still be a mystery writer or would he be free to write fiction? (whatever that means) I tend to think he wouldn't have been confined to only writing detective stories.(less)

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Aug 05, 2009 Gabriel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: shadow-man

Chandler believed, first, that he "chose" to be a writer as some people "choose" to be a waiter or a janitor, second, that he "became" a writer by studying "Black Mask" and the other pulps and simply imitating them (more on that below), and third, that the results were not make-work as they should have been, but serious literature, on a par with Hammett if not one better.

Chandler spent a boozy couple of years tearing the stories in the pulps (which he always maintained a healthy disdain for in...more Chandler believed, first, that he "chose" to be a writer as some people "choose" to be a waiter or a janitor, second, that he "became" a writer by studying "Black Mask" and the other pulps and simply imitating them (more on that below), and third, that the results were not make-work as they should have been, but serious literature, on a par with Hammett if not one better.

Chandler spent a boozy couple of years tearing the stories in the pulps (which he always maintained a healthy disdain for in his correspondence) to pieces and then attempting to put them together again. He wrote out summaries of what went on in the story and then rewrote the story from the summary, in his own words. Sometimes, the results were good. Sometimes, the results were not good. Good or bad, they never seemed to make much sense, though-- the stories had lost the glue that was holding them together, somehow, as though it weren't what happened that was important, but how it was told. All of this carries through to the work that Chandler would call his own.

Even though he was working with structure and planning, the elements of plot, Chander clearly learned nothing about either. He definitely learned from his mistakes-- it wasn't the plot that mattered: he could lose the plot without letting the novel get out of hand. Character and language were the lynchpins; not only enough, but more than enough, to get him through the rough patches where the plot got away from him. This is the lesson of the creative writing workshop-- to let the plot get away from you, to let the story "write itself." Chandler evidently had not read much Poe, and was on record as hating Agatha Christie.

Chandler's novels are cannibalizations (his own word) of short stories he was working on during that long apprenticeship. Somehow, he never subsequently came up with a new plot. He found he didn't need to, just so long as he kept shuffling his little deck over and over again. Different parts of the same story wind up in The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, for instance. There are certain similarities in and The Lady in the Lake, enough to make you wonder if you aren't reading the same book again. The High Window steals from its immediate predecessor, Farewell, My Lovely, but that is as much to say that it steals from The Big Sleep, and to say it bears certain similarities to . They were all written in the same four-year period, and it shows.

All that said, The High Window and the novel that followed it, The Lady in the Lake, are the strongest of the bunch, plot-wise. There is a sense of purpose in the structure that is definitely lacking in the other novels. They read much more like traditional mysteries for that reason, and this might account for the fact that Chandler fans usually rate the other novels higher. Nobody hipped to Chandler reads the guy for his plots-- to do so is to invite boredom or frustration. So when it becomes the focus of the novel, the novel suffers. This one suffered. (less)

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Feb 20, 2012 Myles rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary, mystery

Marlowe always seems to get the good ones, Chandler of course hints at a whole life and strings of cases undocumented in novel or stories, but it's no wonder Marlowe has the kind of attitude he has. A fairly straight-forward case - track down an estranged daughter-in-law for an ill-tempered old woman and retrieve a coin - turns into a serpentine mess with Marlowe often only a half-step ahead of authorities demanding answers. The writing is top-notch and, though Chandler has several ringers, the...more

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May 07, 2013 Michael Battaglia rated it 5 of 5 stars

A lot of people have beliefs in what a detective novel "should" be and since Chandler novels are so archetypical, having set the tone for what feels like ninety percent of everything that followed, there's probably a sense that a Marlowe story should contain all that is good and necessary in a detective story. Dames and danger and murder and moral ambiguity and crime and maybe even a rousing musical number. Oh wait, that's Dennis Potter.

Yet sometimes in trying to define what a detective story is...more A lot of people have beliefs in what a detective novel "should" be and since Chandler novels are so archetypical, having set the tone for what feels like ninety percent of everything that followed, there's probably a sense that a Marlowe story should contain all that is good and necessary in a detective story. Dames and danger and murder and moral ambiguity and crime and maybe even a rousing musical number. Oh wait, that's Dennis Potter.

Yet sometimes in trying to define what a detective story is, we're not as open to the times when a writer decides to color outside the lines and give us a story that's like what it's "supposed" to be, but winds up being not quite. The crayons he's using are all the same shade, it's about where he's applying them. And you so engrossed in focusing on what's missing that you don't notice that what remains isn't merely subtracted, but augmented.

This isn't the best Marlowe story, but frankly I liked it more than the ones where he gets knocked out every five chapters or tries to romance someone who appears to be a bit on the easy side. I come from a SF and fantasy background, with some literature thrown in to feel important (which is how I arrived at Chandler), so the amount of genre mystery stories that I've read consists of one Miss Marple novel and however many Chandler books I've read so far. I have no idea what the genre cliches are, I have no idea where Chandler is ripping himself off from short stories, I don't know into what messy categories the characters fall into. But I like atmosphere and this one has it in spades, bringing back a place that was already fading even when Chandler wrote about it, the sun drenched and corrupted haze of Los Angeles in the years just before World War Two hit.

For once Marlowe get a case that seems easy on the face of it, an old cranky rich lady calls him to her house so he can search for a rare coin that has been stolen from her. She believes it was stolen by her daughter-in-law, who she hates, but because she's rich she wants him to do his detectiving on the sly so that all the local papers don't get scandalized. He takes the case and before too long realizes there's more going on than just looking between the sofa cushions, as the case threatens to drag in mobsters and blackmail and mistresses and shady doings and a secret that was kept from someone a long time ago. He also becomes a magnet for corpses in tried and true Marlowe fashion, although something about this trail of bodies feels different. Unlike other cases where Marlowe is almost constantly in danger, he's hardly even threatened here, not seriously. It's more than he's trying to stop something bad from happening but he can't figure out what the bad is or, worse, whether it's something ongoing. It gives the novel a voyeuristic quality, as if Marlowe is continually walking into the last act of plays that have started without him (not that different from the film version of "No Country for Old Men", in how all the important bloodshed happens offscreen and the living are left to wander in and sort out the aftermath). Here we get to know the people a bit before they're brutally murdered, even if we don't like them and there's not the melodramatic quality of the killings in other novels (like the ice-pick murders from "The Little Sister"), instead there's almost a solemn air to it, as Marlowe steps into zones of stilled chaos and is left to figure out the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that was allowed to be flung into a ceiling fan.

As such, it lacks the depth of his first two masterpieces but even if Chandler wasn't able to reach those heights this time out, he's still working off the same good stuff. The dialogue crackles as Marlowe darts and weaves and dodges around all inquiries, balancing the line between serving the client, serving justice and saving his own skin, and his narration is drenched in glorious atmosphere, simultaneously able to convey the physical details of a locale as well as the emotional components of it. He rarely overwrites and still manages to strike the perfect tone between the literal and what Marlowe sees filtered through his weary eyes. We get more of a sense of him as a person here, his affection for chess and his unspoken desire to be a white knight, his navigation of elements both nefarious and otherwise, his ability to manipulate people (even if it's just to fend them off). We're never given the idea that all his cynicism is a shield against a cruel and unfair world but we do get the notion that maybe he wishes he wasn't so perfectly suited for it.

It's the environment he lives in that comes alive here and acts as a character in itself, all the seamy greedy struggling people all trying to make a living at things that they may not be very good at or just aren't good ideas. From the amateur detective (nicely showing how good Marlowe is in contrast) to the drunk who beats his girlfriend to a coin dealer to the spoiled son to the mobsters and those who love them, we get that cross-section feel that makes his best novels sing, where it feels like all these factions exist in uneasy homeostasis and Marlowe is threading himself through in a way that won't disturb it. Even more amazing we get our first real innocent in a world where even the victims are almost always exhibiting a degree of karma and it plays into the wounded romantic feel here. Marlowe can't help but fit right in, but that doesn't mean he can't stop that from happening to someone else.

The payoff for all the mysterying is a little too clunky, in contrast to his more graceful resolutions. After watching Marlowe stumble about for two hundred pages, he helpfully explains all the missing details in a 1940s version of an info-dump, which even he comments he's getting tired of his own voice. It helps wrap things up but in this novel the mystery almost seems beside the point, where the case he takes into the case he was hired for, where he has to convince a person who already thought they were saved that they need to be saved. It gives us one of his most graceful and grey endings, and along the way one of his finest lines: "I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again." Maybe one of the best descriptions to appear in any mystery novel, it's stark in its minimalism and yet like the best of Chandler's work, reveals the lifetime of a world behind it, and every ounce of the weight that presses down on those who deserve it and those who don't and those who are content merely to bear it. (less)

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Jun 16, 2012 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Chandler's books are well worth reading even if you aren't into mystery novels. His novels are much more than that. They are, in many ways, an indictment of humanity.
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"Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all ro...more

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Nov 27, 2010 Savvy rated it 4 of 5 stars

The quintessential urban private eye!...Philip Marlowe!

Raymond Chandler is a writer's writer... His prose sparkles, his narrative intrigues, and he's truly the master of hard boiled crime noir!

This was my first peek into the landscape of my native Los Angeles at a time (before I was born) when the air was clear and the roads were lined with a lushness long laid to rest.
Hollywood was smoldering with sexy fresh talent and glamour and deceit were de rigueur.

These were the novels that I saw at my G...more

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Jan 16, 2010 Nikki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, crime

Had to laugh when I found reviews saying nobody ever reads Chandler for his plot. It's probably true, at least once you know what you're getting into. There are parts of the books where I have no idea what's going on but I'm still hanging on because the way he writes is so amazing. I think I say this in every review of his books, though. This one had some awesome phrases in it -- the description of Marlowe as a "shop-soiled Galahad" particularly struck me, and "women who should be young but have...more

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Jan 31, 2012 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

I can't remember when I first read a book by Raymond Chandler. Needless to say, it was a long time ago...
I was quite enamored by hard boiled detective novels and Chandler is a godfather/God of the genre. I know that The High Window was not one of the Chandler novels I read years ago and it certainly isn't one of his famous novels, although this one was made into a film just as Farewell My Lovely and The Big Sleep were. The High Window plot initiates when a widow hires Los Angeles private detecti...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Nigel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was once in a bookshop and heard a customer asking an assistant about Iris Murdoch. The reply she got was "Iris Murdoch's books were of a time". I wasn't sure what she meant at the time but having just read The High Window I think I now know. This book is clearly of its time. I do not think you would come across Chandler's style of writing in a book by a contemporary author. Descriptive yes, but in a very matter of fact and sequential manner. Maybe that fits his genre.
Philip Marlowe is the ori...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was so thrilled to find an English book in a Korean book store that I had to get it. I throughly enjoyed reading this Chandler story. It follows Philip Marlowe getting hired by an old widow to get back a gold coin worth a fair amount of money. Suspected to be stolen by the hated daughter-in-law. As usual, nothing or no one is up-front. What I liked about this book, is that there are many more loose ends that are not tied up at the end of the story as there were at the beginning. This book has...more

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Dec 13, 2010 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Of the Raymond Chandler books I have read so far (the others being The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely), I enjoyed this one the most. Part of this is I took the time to reread the beginning after I realized I had missed or forgotten some information. I think I'm getting better at reading mysteries, and trying to keep up with Marlowe's reasoning on the case. This one had some superb writing, as well as including the term "antimacassar."

I also recently watched "The Big Lebowski" and seeing how t...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Agatha West rated it 3 of 5 stars

There are many good reviews here on goodreads so I won't go into great detail. This is my first Chandler novel. As others have said, Chandler has a great writing style, however the plot can get fuzzy at times and I had to go back and re-read parts to understand what was going on. To me this detracted a bit from the story.

Also, I really found it hard to root for any of the characters in this book, and that took away a bit from the end for me. Marlowe is a great character, and Chandler makes you f...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime, mystery

Not quite as awesome as Farewell, My Lovely, "The High Window" is still a very good book, a taut mystery, with the unflappable Marlowe up to his usual sleuthing.

Readers just starting out with Chandler (as I was, just last week!), should consider getting The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window. It's a nice hardcover collecting Chandler's first three novels, and it can be ordered online for relatively not much.

Next Philip Marlowe mystery: The Lady in the Lake.

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May 27, 2011 lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

"She had eyes like strange sins."

Seriously...you just have to love the writing style of Raymond Chandler. So often when I'm reading one of his novels I have to stop and re-read a sentence because of its imagery and the simple words he uses to create that imagery. I wholeheartedly agree with those people who consider him a master writer. The High Window is no exception.

Though I may not rave about this novel as much as I might rave about other Philip Marlowe books, this one, I think, was well-cra...more "She had eyes like strange sins."

Seriously...you just have to love the writing style of Raymond Chandler. So often when I'm reading one of his novels I have to stop and re-read a sentence because of its imagery and the simple words he uses to create that imagery. I wholeheartedly agree with those people who consider him a master writer. The High Window is no exception.

Though I may not rave about this novel as much as I might rave about other Philip Marlowe books, this one, I think, was well-crafted even if a bit dull in some places. This is the story of Marlowe who takes on a case from Mrs. Murdock. Originally, his job is to locate a stolen, rare coin called the Brasher Doubloon that has been stolen from the collection of rare coins amassed by Mrs. Murdock's late husband, a collection that is kept in the house. Mrs. Murdock suspects her daughter-in-law of stealing the coin and so Marlowe sets out to find the coin and return it to his client. In the process, three murders are committed--the victims being George Anson Phillips, Elisha Morningstar, and Louis Vannier--and as Marlowe tries to solve the increasingly complex case he uncovers blackmail and deceit of the worst kind. Through it all we have a damsel in distress that does win Marlowe's sympathy and for whom he tries to make right what can never be made right but does the best that he can. We also have Marlowe showing characteristic disdain for the police and their ineptitude at solving crimes and his hatred for his wealthy clients who seek to arrange their worlds to their liking, no matter who gets hurt. Innocence is only a word with no real meaning, and those who are innocent cannot remain in a corrupt and amoral Los Angeles and must be removed (either through death or physical relocation). Marlowe in this novel is still the same Galahad-knight figure trying to navigate his way through the underworld of Los Angeles, and this is most clearly established through his penchant for playing chess, but he is also, perhaps more so than in the previous novels, more edgy and just plain tired. But he must go on, doing the best for his clients while not entirely betraying his own soul. One of the lines I loved best in this novel came when Marlowe tells a police homicide detective: "Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine." For Marlowe, it is about owning his own soul and refusing to allow anyone to touch his soul. It must be kept as much intact and good as possible.

The thing about the Marlowe novels is that they can appear to be deceptively simple to a casual reader due to Chandler's diction and sentence structure. But Marlowe is a wonderfully complex character even as he speaks in the most simple English. I often wonder why more people don't read Chandler's work (or, shall I say, people that I know). Yes, it's different from the detective fiction that we find on our bookstore shelves today and yes, it is about a very specific time in Los Angeles, but whenever I read one of these novels I don't really think about it being so totally outdated that I can't still relate to the story that is being told. In the end, though, I really liked this book and I also read it really quickly. I actually had a hard time putting it down last night, and to be honest, that hasn't really happened to me in a while. So The High Window is definitely an enjoyable read for anyone who likes detective fiction in general and hard-boiled DF in particular.
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About Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.

In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In...more

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Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe, #2)

The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe, #4)

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“From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.” — 184 people liked it

“I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.” — 7 people liked it

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The High Window (Philip Marlowe #3)

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