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cartoonmicah 's review for:
The High Window
by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler did for LA noire detectives what P.G. Wodehouse did for the British aristocracy. What do they have in common, you ask? I would argue that there is more there than first meets the eye. They both have an unerring gut instinct for word craft. If either of then every wrote a textbook on accounting or dental hygiene or latin grammar, I would want to read it. They both have a comic sense that would leave any audience in tears of laughter. They both openly tease the wealthy. They both love to run a protagonist or two through the mangle and back again, most often to end up somewhere near where they started. They both have a way of convincing you that you're really glad you came along for the ride, even if it was only for the gags.
Wodehouse and Chandler take their hilarity in different directions. Wodehouse wrote silly stories about English whims. Chandler wrote gritty stories about Hollywood scandals. Wodehouse seems to ask that we set aside any ideas of deeper moral meaning when we pick up his books. Chandler asks us to keep morality on our minds, as the corruption and injustice at every turn is the source of our comic sneering and the reason we continually resort to jokes.
The High Window follows Philip Marlowe in a very typical spiderweb of intentional deception and disrepute among the elite classes in Los Angeles. Marlowe is called in to track down a rare coin that has gone missing and from the get go he finds dead bodies dropping out of every closet he sticks his nose in. After that, he's just trying to figure out who did what without letting the police catch him and a smoking gun in the same room.
As with his other novels, Chandler brings together all of his most enjoyable elements in a style that leaves nothing to be desired. The prose sings and the plot thickens. Marlowe will always be my favorite detective, a man bent on justice and doing the right thing by those who deserve it, sometime in spite of the law. He was once a cop, but the system was as corrupt as the culprits. As a private detective, he reserves the right to get himself killed on his own terms. And his terms seem to be justice and peace of mind about his own position. He is a bit of an undersold genius and a back talker who uses his wisenheimer attitude to set himself up. He loves chess and it shows in every step he takes and every sniping comment he makes.
The only thing I didn't enjoy about this novel was the way the plot seemed to slip loose and nearly get away from him. I was more than satisfied with all the elements set up in the first two-thirds of the novel and the ending was wrapped up nicely, but that last series of events left me scratching my head. I could barely make sense of what was going on between all the characters and clueless as to how Marlowe was reaching any sort of conclusions in the midst of it. I don't think the reader is given enough of a fair chance to keep up, but it was one hell of a ride while it lasted and I look forward to the next one.
Wodehouse and Chandler take their hilarity in different directions. Wodehouse wrote silly stories about English whims. Chandler wrote gritty stories about Hollywood scandals. Wodehouse seems to ask that we set aside any ideas of deeper moral meaning when we pick up his books. Chandler asks us to keep morality on our minds, as the corruption and injustice at every turn is the source of our comic sneering and the reason we continually resort to jokes.
The High Window follows Philip Marlowe in a very typical spiderweb of intentional deception and disrepute among the elite classes in Los Angeles. Marlowe is called in to track down a rare coin that has gone missing and from the get go he finds dead bodies dropping out of every closet he sticks his nose in. After that, he's just trying to figure out who did what without letting the police catch him and a smoking gun in the same room.
As with his other novels, Chandler brings together all of his most enjoyable elements in a style that leaves nothing to be desired. The prose sings and the plot thickens. Marlowe will always be my favorite detective, a man bent on justice and doing the right thing by those who deserve it, sometime in spite of the law. He was once a cop, but the system was as corrupt as the culprits. As a private detective, he reserves the right to get himself killed on his own terms. And his terms seem to be justice and peace of mind about his own position. He is a bit of an undersold genius and a back talker who uses his wisenheimer attitude to set himself up. He loves chess and it shows in every step he takes and every sniping comment he makes.
The only thing I didn't enjoy about this novel was the way the plot seemed to slip loose and nearly get away from him. I was more than satisfied with all the elements set up in the first two-thirds of the novel and the ending was wrapped up nicely, but that last series of events left me scratching my head. I could barely make sense of what was going on between all the characters and clueless as to how Marlowe was reaching any sort of conclusions in the midst of it. I don't think the reader is given enough of a fair chance to keep up, but it was one hell of a ride while it lasted and I look forward to the next one.