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

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The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe #4)

4.01 of 5 stars 4.01 · rating details · 6,093 ratings · 319 reviews

A couple of missing wives—one a rich man's and one a poor man's—become the objects of Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

Paperback, 272 pages

Published August 12th 1988 by Vintage (first published 1943)

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May 12, 2013 Mish rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Mish by: Michael

Shelves: 2013-lit-exp-challenge, bookgroup-crime-mystery-thrillers, classics, crime, fiction, historical, mystery, own

I came to reading this book because I needed something to read for my Literary Exploration challenge, Hardboiled genre. Never having read this type of genre before, I had refer to my bookish friend, Michael Kitto, for help. He recommended The Lady in the Lake as an introduction too the well known and respected Private Investigator, Philip Marlowe, and to this genre. I can see from several reviews that this was a very popular choice for first timers like me.

In this book Marlowe was employed by a...more I came to reading this book because I needed something to read for my Literary Exploration challenge, Hardboiled genre. Never having read this type of genre before, I had refer to my bookish friend, Michael Kitto, for help. He recommended The Lady in the Lake as an introduction too the well known and respected Private Investigator, Philip Marlowe, and to this genre. I can see from several reviews that this was a very popular choice for first timers like me.

In this book Marlowe was employed by a wealthy business man Derace Kingsley to look for his missing wife Crystal. Derace didn’t really want Crystal back, as she had a reputation of being a loose woman, but wanted to keep track of her and perhaps avoid any pubic disgrace on his behalf. Marlowe investigation takes him to a cottage in the mountains owned by the Kingsley’s. It is there he discovers another disappearance of the neighbour’s wife and corpse lying at the bottom of the lake of one of the missing women.

Initially I thought it was slow to begin with as Marlowe tends to describe, in fine detail everything in his path, but I soon discovered it’s how Marlowe works. He tends to analyze everything from the landscape, to the body language of his suspects and once I knew how he works, I was able to go with the flow and was really enjoying it.

Raymond Chandler has bought this honest to goodness, no bullshit PI to life through his writing, and I can truly see why he’s so well liked. Marlowe is definitely a delightful odd ball that smokes like a chimney, and drinks an excessive amount of alcohol that I’m perplexed as to how he can fully function the next morning. He has an unorthodox method of interrogation, which usually involves pouring large quantity of liquor to the person being questioned. And by that time, they are off their face and are more than ready to reveal anything to him. Marlowe is honest person but far too out spoken which can sometimes be a concern. Whether it is intentional or not, but Marlowe out spoken nature to others has occasionally provoked a hostile and violent response, that’s left Marlowe many times beaten and bruised.

The mystery is not an edge of your seat, but it was an intriguing and somewhat complex murder mystery with several twist and turns. After the first murder is committed, more murdered bodies would surface, there’s a cover up and all these characters involved had a possible motive one way or the other. I knew that all these incidence where connected somehow, but it was just a matter of forming a connection in my own mind. However it wasn’t until the end that I actually found out who done it.

I have already tried my hands on a Noir novel and really enjoyed it and if this is a taste of what Hardboiled is like then I’m sold. I thought it was a magnificent novel. I will definitely read more of Marlowe at some stage and perhaps start from the beginning and read The Big Sleep next.
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Apr 23, 2011 meeners rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

the reason why i like the hardboiled mystery genre so much (despite the rampant misogyny, class biases, race biases, etc.) is that it is a genre wholly defined by and understood through style. the hardboiled world is above all a deliberately fictional one, a world found only on the page, and as such its appeal is not necessarily in the facts of the case or the personality of the detective but in the narration of these things.

i think chandler's at his best when the narrative point of reference is...more

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Nov 27, 2007 Timothy rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who like film noir or mysteries

I'd never read Raymond Chandler. I always heard his name in comparison to Murakami, so I've been interested in reading one of his books for as long as I've been a Murakami fan.

This was so much fun to read mostly because Chandler's detective is witty and smart. He notices the small things and describes things in ways most people would never think of. Read the first chapter and decide for yourself. This book has a good, if not confusing, murder-mystery, but Chandler keeps it moving with the right...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Yuki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, mystery-or-crime, noir, donate, literary-fiction

Lost a decent night's sleep! My early guess about the woman pulled from the lake was correct, but there were plenty more twists and turns and surprises to be played out, and from about halfway in I could not put the book down. Towards the end I was reminded of the policemen "Bud" White and Exley from the 1997 film "L.A. Confidential" (which I enjoyed very much). I haven't read James Ellroy's novel yet, but it's amazing to see what a direct influence Chandler still has on current noir fiction.

'"I...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Little Raven rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime

This was my first Raymond Chandler novel, and I am hooked. I bought a Penguin edition from 1952 in a secondhand bookshop without realising who Chandler was (I'm terrible at remembering authors names). The blurb on my edition is totally different to the on here on Goodreads, and far more enticing while giving away a lot less of the plot.

My favourite thing about this book is the complexity of the plot, it circles around, looping back over early events and weaving everything more and more tightly t...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Perry Whitford rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The fourth outing for Philip Marlowe, the Sir Lancelot of sleuths. This case, involving disappearing wives and corrupt policemen, takes Marlowe away from his usual haunts, up into the mountains beyond the San Bernadino valley.
All the staples are here: polished businessmen clients, dubious doctors and of course, cool, smoky, duplicitous women. As is customary Marlowe stumbles across a few bodies, gets abused, implicated and slugged; yet he stays on the trail, incorruptible and incorrigible, alway...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Steffan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've read this book now three times in as many months. The first time I read it, years ago, I was nineteen. Much older now, I had to come back with a different perspective and try to see what Raymond Chandler was really up to. Entertaining the reader wasn't the point. Sending Marlowe into another violent beat down, like some of the other books, wasn't the point. Chasing down the mystery man, or woman, wasn't the point either.

I can say this. Raymond Chandler, for those paying attention, penned a...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Jack rated it 5 of 5 stars

In 1942 Los Angeles, Marlowe is summoned to the offices of Derace Kingsley, a pompous, self-important businessman. Kingsley has married a wild-natured trophy wife who has her own money - AND her own mind, which Kingsley can't seem to control. She appears to have left him to "get a Mexican divorce" and marry a playboy, but has been out of contact for the past month, other than a telegram from El Paso informing him of the pending divorce. He is suspicious because the man she was to marry is back i...more

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Jul 10, 2010 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

(I am reading the complete novels of Raymond Chandler as published by The Library of America but reviewing the books individually.)

The Lady In The Lake has a number of interesting political themes that seem to distinguish it from other Philip Marlowe tales. Most primary to the story is the comparison between rural and urban police work brought about by the parallel murders - one in an out-of-the-way mountain cabin and a series in fictitious Bay City - which form the major work of the plot. The b...more

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Apr 21, 2010 Lesley-Gail rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was my first Chandler, and I became an instant fan. I was really impressed with Chandler's style. Philip Marlowe is easy to like or dislike depending on his antics. It was easy to guess who was "the lady in the lake", and the motives of some of the characters. Even though some of the answers were out in the open, Chandler still provided you with enough twists to keep you turning the page. I could easily see how he became one of the most respected mystery writers. Truly enjoyable.

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Feb 15, 2012 Cathy DuPont rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am so glad that I started reading Chandler (and Marlowe) from the first book otherwise I would have put this one down.

I was about half way when I decided to read some reviews on Kindle to see if I was missing something and sure enough, there were others who felt similar to me, that it wasn't 'up to snuff' with the last two books.

The writing was great alright but the story was so convoluted it was difficult to keep up with. The ending seemed to be like all these loose threads conveniently gathe...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Michael Battaglia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Straying missing wives. Bodies where bodies shouldn't be. Cops with extracurricular activities. Sounds like another day in the life of Philip Marlowe, the private detective who must either really love his job or is too afraid to go out and get a real one. You have to wonder how the poor guy makes any money, even though he seems to have no shortage of work the cases he does get quickly become so overcomplicated that the time and expense involved almost seem to negate the amount of money he would...more Straying missing wives. Bodies where bodies shouldn't be. Cops with extracurricular activities. Sounds like another day in the life of Philip Marlowe, the private detective who must either really love his job or is too afraid to go out and get a real one. You have to wonder how the poor guy makes any money, even though he seems to have no shortage of work the cases he does get quickly become so overcomplicated that the time and expense involved almost seem to negate the amount of money he would make. Good thing he doesn't have expensive taste.

But one of the joys of reading a Marlowe story is watching what seems at first to be a simple case slowly but with gathering speed spiral almost completely out of his control, while Marlowe remains in the center more or less unflappable. You get the sense that he's a guy who if he hasn't seen everything, at the very least can imagine it. And for enough money, maybe he'll even stop it.

Here, a lot goes wrong in a very short period of time. A rich businessman hires Marlowe to figure out where his wife went after she sends him a weird telegram stating she's getting a divorce and marrying her lover. Standard stuff, except the lover has no idea what this is all about. It doesn't take long for the titular lady to make an appearance and throw the case out of whack entirely, as all these threads that shouldn't connect start to intertwine together in ways that keep trying to strangle poor Marlowe. Before long, people who should be culprits are dead, people who have been dead for a long time are figuring in the case, the local police are ticked off and Marlowe alternates between being a punching bag and having guns pointed at him. It's enough to make anyone question their dedication to the cause but what makes the Marlowe novels so interesting is how our favorite detective is so unswerving. In a sense he's no angel but even his shade of grey is far cleaner than almost everyone else in the vicinity. Marlowe may be the last person to nominate himself for sainthood but time and time again he's the most honest person in the room by a longshot, maybe because he has nothing to lose and nothing to hide, or because he likes getting punched for saying things that people don't want to hear.

Some folks have commented that this is the weakest of the Marlowe stories (relatively speaking) and in a sense it comes across as the lightest. Especially when the last two novels I've read are "The Big Sleep" and "Farewell My Lovely", Chander's two candidates for literary immortality. Coming off those two novels would be a tough act for any novel to follow but what's freeing about this one is that there aren't any grand literary aspirations. Yes, it does lack the thematic depth of the other two novels, so what we're left with is basically a rather solid mystery with the best narrator and tour guide one can imagine. But it allows us to focus more on the mystery itself, which won't be a headscratcher to anyone who has read more than a few mysteries (the likely explanation for the lady in the lake winds up being the obvious one, but it is only the obvious one if you live inside a detective novel) but has enough twists and turns to keep the principals busy for two hundred sixty some odd pages it takes to wrap things up (with a bang, as it turns out). What makes this one more interesting is how it takes Marlowe for a little while out of his comfort zone, driving him out to the countryside to investigate the country cottage where the straying wife sometimes stayed. After so many scenes of gritty alleys and claustrophobic high rises, the open space makes for a change of pace and Marlowe's reactions to the new surroundings and the people that he meets there (two of the most fascinating characters in the book and like him, uniquely suited to their environments) make this one stand out.

But in the meantime there's plenty of atmosphere and oodles of Chandler's ability to describe something in the most poetically noirish way to do so. How he manages not to repeat himself is impressive. As usual the book functions as a mood piece as much as a piece of puzzle-filled entertainment and one of the most striking scenes is a brief chapter where Marlowe just basically sits in his office and silently ruminates. Even though Marlowe narrates, it still functions as a silent scene, with lines like "I sat very still and listened to the evening grow quiet outside the open windows. And very slowly I grew quiet with it" conveying not just the texture of an evening but the utter weariness of a man tired of pushing himself to solve crimes, but unable to stomach a crime not being solved. It's Chandler's magic way of painting with such deft minimalist strokes, where Marlowe constantly talks but somehow only says exactly what he needs to say, sketching a world with charcoal shadows where the spaces suggested and the spaces unseen hold the real and true stories, with only Marlowe brave enough to go in and bring back word of what we'd rather not see. (less)

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Nov 06, 2012 Erik rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: has-good-review, of-great-delight

The Lady in the Lake is my least favorite of the Raymond Chandler's I've read (behind The Long Goodbye and Farewell, my Lovely) but that's a bit like saying, "This is the third largest lump of gold I've found in the river."

It's still gold, and it's still something you found in a river. Not exactly a woman's golden ring, but not a dirt pie either.

Despite what some other reviewers on here will suggest (too many Literature classes in college, I would suspect), Raymond Chandler was not writing socia...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Benjamin Thomas rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: e-book, mystery-detective-pi, mystery-hard-boiled-crime, pulp-era-and-pulp-like

Many people have remarked that this is not the best of Raymond Chandler's Marlowe novels. For me it was still very enjoyable and another great example of what draws me to early detective fiction in the first place. I did think the actual mystery was pretty straight forward and a bit less complex than previous Marlowe books I've read. And I also noticed that there seemed to be fewer of those classic phrases that Chandler is known for. Many of them are still there but just fewer of them.

This is th...more

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Sep 26, 2011 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-classics, mystery, series, noir

Everyone’s favorite hard-boiled private eye Marlowe is back, and this time he’s been hired to track down a respectable entrepreneur’s wild wife. She sent a telegram weeks ago stating she was going to marry her boy toy, Lavery, but Lavery was spotted in Hollywood and claims to have no idea where Mrs. Kingsley is. The last place she was known to be was at the Kingsleys’ lake-side country cottage, so that small town is where Marlowe starts his investigation.

Having the setting partly in the countrys...more

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Apr 11, 2011 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1940s, crime

Thanks to this book I woke up this morning with my eyelids feeling like two well licked stamps. I was trying to keep myself to five chapters a day, but last night I bolted the thing in a wee-hour biblio-binge. My head's throbbing now, but it was worth it. The Lady in the Lake (1943) is just about as good as Chandler gets, almost as good as The Big Sleep, but for different reasons. Chandler's first Marlowe novel is all about style and character; the plot weaves all over the road, making it unlike...more Thanks to this book I woke up this morning with my eyelids feeling like two well licked stamps. I was trying to keep myself to five chapters a day, but last night I bolted the thing in a wee-hour biblio-binge. My head's throbbing now, but it was worth it. The Lady in the Lake (1943) is just about as good as Chandler gets, almost as good as The Big Sleep, but for different reasons. Chandler's first Marlowe novel is all about style and character; the plot weaves all over the road, making it unlikely that you'll ever figure out whodunnit. But The Lady in the Lake is a suspenseful, and more importantly, a solvable mystery that will keep you turning the pages to see if you're on the right track.

Marlowe's hired to find a missing wife. His investigations take him to a secluded cabin community in the hills above San Bernardino. The air at 5,000 feet is a sweet and pure, but the vice up there is just as nasty as in the city. Law and order is provided by Sheriff Patton, one of Chandler's most likable characters, who could be just one step ahead of Marlowe, if he made the effort. The rest of the cast is made up of society's dregs ... some successful, but all repellent in his or her own way: crooked cops, a dope doctor, drunks, unfaithful spouses, thugs, a gigolo, and of course, tidy blondes with little guns and cold hearts. One of them ends up under water for far too long.

The action takes place in early 1942, and it's clear that America is ramping up for a big war. Rubber is rationed, sentries are posted here and there, and some delicacies are getting harder to find. Luckily for Marlowe, there's no shortage of booze. He seems to hit the bottle a lot harder in this book than he did in the early novels. All the graft, corruption, murder and general moral decay contrast awkwardly with the many patriotic statements Chandler drops into the book. Looks like the War Board asked him to do a little flag waving. Makes you wonder, though, if the boys on the troop ships reading this book ever questioned what they were fighting for.

There's no question, though, about what I was reading for, and that was pure entertainment. And I found it. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a book page by page as much as I have The Lady in the Lake. If you're going to read Chandler, start with The Big Sleep just to figure out who Marlowe is and to get a feel for Chandler's style. Then move on to The Lady in the Lake to see what he can do with a plot. He won't leave you behind this time.

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Jul 29, 2012 Myles rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, literary

A seemingly routine case where a man wants to find his reckless wife becomes complicated, of course, by hushed-up murders, blackmail and police corruption when the body of a woman is discovered in Little Fawn Lake.

If he hadn't already displayed full confidence after The Big Sleep in Stories and Early Novels, I would say that Chandler had come into his own here. His work keeps getting better and better. What distinguishes The Lady in Lake is that Chandler can inject reality into his smart-mouthed...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Larry Piper rated it 4 of 5 stars

I liked this quite well. Getting into it was a bit difficult because I was still having issues with the unsatisfactory ending of Blonde Faith. But, once that was behind me, I got into the book. The final resolution was a bit convoluted, but not too bad.

Basically, Philip Marlowe is asked to help a rich guy find his missing wife. She'd been gone for a month before he got suspicious that something might be amiss, but then he did and brought Marlowe into the picture. Marlowe started up with a lake-s...more

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Feb 13, 2011 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: BBC7 listeners

Shelves: summer-2010, published-1943, mystery-thriller, play-dramatisation, noir, north-americas, re-read, winter-20102011

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 11, 2012 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Marlowe away from his home turf ... a nice change. The usual routine case becomes something more and more twisted until you pull your hair out and finally breath a sigh of relief when private eye Philip Marlowe unravels it all. Not my favorite in the series, they're The Big Sleep, Farewell my Lovely and The Long Goodbye, but still plenty of amazing noir Chandler language to be had here. Marlowe's wry commentaries are always worth their money.
*
On a side note, if you catch the flick, starring Robe...more

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Jan 17, 2010 Nikki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, crime

This might've been my favourite so far, and that might be because I managed to figure it out before Chandler got there. I like feeling smart, and after he lost me plenty of times in the other books, I got pleased with myself for following this one just fine. The plotting was tighter, or at least, more comprehensible, and it didn't seem to inexplicably wander quite so much.

As always, though, in my opinion the writing was the stronger part -- and the characterisation, of course: mostly that of Mar...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Aaron rated it 3 of 5 stars

Whoa. Okay, this is gonna be tricky. Though I quite liked the style, I got lost about the time they started bringing up Mildred Haviland, and stayed lost until the reveal, which seemed clever but would have worked better by having more information. I felt like the real focus of the story wasn't on the case he was pursuing, which made it hard to put the pieces together...

Marlowe is an inspired creation, just in the way he talks or doesn't talk you can sense all kinds of character beats from him....more

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Jul 24, 2012 Franky rated it 4 of 5 stars

What appears to be a case of finding the whereabouts of a missing wife turns out to be much more, as is typical of Chandler to make things a bit more complicated once the first mystery is presented to us. Marlowe is summoned and hired by Derace Kingsley to find his wife, Crystal Kingsley. Crystal has apparently slipped town with another man and Kingsley, worried about public scandal, puts a price on finding her. Marlowe heads to Little Fawn Lake, a small resort away from the city, to find some c...more What appears to be a case of finding the whereabouts of a missing wife turns out to be much more, as is typical of Chandler to make things a bit more complicated once the first mystery is presented to us. Marlowe is summoned and hired by Derace Kingsley to find his wife, Crystal Kingsley. Crystal has apparently slipped town with another man and Kingsley, worried about public scandal, puts a price on finding her. Marlowe heads to Little Fawn Lake, a small resort away from the city, to find some clues, as it seems to be the last place she was seen. As with many Marlowe novels, the primary mystery leads to a few other puzzles, and, soon after arriving and speaking with one of the more eccentric characters, heavy drinker Bill Chess, Marlowe finds himself in the middle of quite a case, where people aren’t really who you think they are and even if they are, you can’t really trust them. After a mysterious death, the game is pretty much on for Marlowe, as he tries to understand the motives of a murderer, all the while dealing with some shady types and even corrupt cops.

I read The Big Sleep awhile back and was sold on Chandler. The Lady in the Lake is another solid entry into the Marlowe series, the fourth book in the series, which takes Marlowe out of his usual Los Angeles surroundings to backwards Bay City and into Little Fawn Lake. There’s something about Chandler’s prose and style that is so fitting for the setting and pace of The Lady in the Lake. With Marlowe as his lead, the novel can change from cynical humor to exacting, gripping tension and suspense within moments. Marlowe’s imperfect style of investigation really is what makes this novel tick, and he carries the torch for the narration, being able to read seedy people and dangerous situations. When there is a slip up, he has to worm his way out using those instincts he’s had for years.

The Lady in the Lake is a fine example of a noir classic, and Chandler illustrates why he is considered one of the finest writers of this genre.
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Jan 05, 2009 C.E. rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anybody who appreciates really well-crafted sentences

It's funny how, when the truly great American writers are mentioned, Chandler's name doesn't immediately come to mind. That's probably because he plied his trade in genre fiction, instead of something more instantly respectable. Still, you'd be hard pressed to find another writer as gifted in the art of crafting immaculately written sentences in clean crisp electric prose that leaps off the page, in a low-key sort of way.

This relatively short (266 pages) work scores highly because its plot isn'...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Randolph Carter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime, fiction, hard-boiled

Marlowe is still the hardest of the hard boiled and Chandler was the best at this sort of thing. Not as good as his earlier novels or his short stories (the private dick plays best in the short format, The Goldfish being the best), this is still pretty good stuff. Urban fantasy of the forever flawed white night who cannot be turned, ever questing, meeting damsels and demons and rarely using his sword. This is not a mystery, Chandler's plots were so convoluted and sometimes made no sense at all,...more

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Jun 17, 2010 Patrick O'Neil rated it 4 of 5 stars

I moved to Hollywood last year and this summer I decided to re-read all of Raymond Chandler's work. I live in the neighborhood he often describes. I walk the same streets as his protagonist Philip Marlowe. Even though LA seems hell bent to eradicate its past there are still remnants of those days. A lot of the restaurants, hotels, and apartment buildings are still here, while the streets and neighborhoods never change names. If you look in the shadows there's the grit of a bygone era just under...more

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Sep 13, 2010 John Spillane rated it 4 of 5 stars

If for some reason the most interesting bar companion in the world asked me to rattle off my favorite movie genres Noir would be listed 1-3. I polished off the perfect to good American classics, mowed down everything Melville and the frenchies could churn out, and then turned to second tier Hollywood offerings. Unfortunately semi-star Noirs are grim corner of cinema, "Nightmare Alley" and "The Lady From Shanghai"I'm eyeballing you.

The effort was so discouraging that reading to get my fix seemed...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Guy Salvidge rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's solid but a fair way off Chandler's best. The early part is set in a rural location called Little Fawn Lake, and while the descriptions are very detailed, I think Chandler's work suffers when it isn't set in the city. Luckily, most of this novel is, and that's where it really gets going. Frankly, some of the writing in The Lady in the Lake isn't as good as it could be, however. It's workmanlike and lacking the pizzazz of Chandler's first, second and sixth novels. The plot gets more and more...more

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Dec 05, 2010 Steveschifini rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you enjoy film noir, you are enjoying it only on one level. To really immerse yourself into the world of the seedy 1950's subculture you must see it through Marlowe's eyes for only Chandler could make the seedy poetic while forging the elements of a genre that endured 70 years of imitators. It's more than just cliche's of cheap scotch, crooked cops and dames with gams, it's proof of the seduction and allure of the written word.

The Lady in the Lake hardly deviates from the Chandler formula- wh...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Phil Mc rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Considerably better than “The High Window” and easily as good as the first novel, Chandler has returned to form. The plot whips along at a fair old pace and has the trademark twists and turns you’d expect but, most pleasingly, that sense of peril is back. Marlowe is so hopelessly mired in trouble as he works through the intricate inequities of those around him that it’s hard to see a way out. Thankfully, Chandler could.

If there is a flaw to this series you could label it as formulaic; however, s...more

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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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Books by Raymond Chandler

Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe, #2)

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Quotes from The Lady in the Lake

“I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.” — 20 people liked it

“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get.” — 8 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776159.The_Lady_in_the_Lake?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320556518l/776159.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776159.The_Lady_in_the_Lake?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler[/url]

The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe #4)

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