The High Window

by Raymond Chandler

PI Philip Marlowe is tasked with tracking down a rare gold coin, allegedly stolen by the owner’s daughter-in-law, but his work is complicated by the fact that anyone who handles it is killed – drawing the attention of the police and adding pressure to solve the case.

Paperback

About the author

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great 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 addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.

The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."

Reviews

[Gary Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads Review, ‘The High Window’ by Raymond Chandler.

I’ve come to Chandler late in my reading journey (I did read ‘Farewell My Lovely early on), however I did not appreciate the beautiful and gorgeous style that Chandler expressed. Now, suddenly having read two Chandler Philip Marlowe novels this week (‘The Lady in the Lake) I have been fully exposed to the distinctive engaging prose which Chandler wooed his readers. His descriptions of 1940s Los Angeles are simply hypnotic. His understanding and expression of geography in order to tell the story is fascinating. He must have had the most remarkable mind to soak up minor details about the physical world around him. Houses, roads, suburbs and the minutiae of doors, pathways, gardens add so much to the ongoing narrative. Also his characters are burnt in text. His concentration of both the men and women who populate the stories are at the base erotic. He creates larger than life characters who are real in his universe. Marlowe is a loner chasing bad people who commit foul acts. He stands alone up against the scum, the police and even his clients. It is almost as if Marlowe is picked out by clients who themselves have committed vile acts and require his absolution. Wonderfully told. Pure pleasure. It makes sense how Hollywood snatched up his novels to create generations of interpretations of the ‘private detective’ as messiah. Reading his at times complex and interconnected stories can confuse the reader as to who is who and what is what. Yet, Chandler/Marlowe delivers in his stories abrupt and obvious outcomes. The stories build through webs of slow moving plot that suddenly in the final stages explodes in revelation. Fantastic and beautiful literature. So good and utterly satiating. Brilliant. Bought for $11.95 (on sale) from Harry Hartog, Top Ryde. Enjoy.