Customer Reviews

The Lady in the Lake

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this absolute literary classic, Philip Marlowe has been asked to look into the disappearance of the straying wife of a local businessman. His search to find her leads him through dead bodies, corrupt police, and wicked women. The amazing thing is that the book doesn't preach, it just sees-- Marlowe witnesses the world with a kind of fatalistic and dispassionate affection-- the things people do to each other; the things people do to themselves. The kind of writing style of which most writers can only dream.

The Lady in the Lake is one of Chandler's best. Philip Marlowe finds a body--but whose body is it? Laced with Chandler's wry commentary on everything from rich dames to down and out war veterans, this book is an absolute delight from the first page to the last. Classic Chandler. Sharp, funny, full of surprising twists, and always the most original prose around. Highest recommendation for an American "noir" novel.

THE LADY IN THE LAKE is one of Raymond Chandler's weaker Philip Marlowe novels, if not the weakest. (I say "weakest" as opposed to "worst," because, to paraphrase the cliche, reading Chandler is a bit like sex: Even when it's bad, it's still pretty good.) But that's just it. It's not that this is a bad read by any stretch - it's head and shoulders above the best mysteries taking up space on the bestseller lists, and most of the mysteries ever published. But, because this is Chandler, it's held to a higher standard than disposable airline reads, and by that yardstick, it falls short.

The story of this (the first Marlowe novel written after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor), like all in the series, starts simply enough: Our Hero is hired by a wealthy businessman to find his missing wife. And like all Marlowe stories, the case soon becomes much more complicated, leading Marlowe on a trail of twists and turns through some of the darkest shadows of his world until, at last, all is revealed.

It is a fun trail to follow for the reader, if not always for Marlowe. Still, it doesn't match the intense intricacy of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY nor the lurid seductiveness of THE BIG SLEEP - both among the classics of 20th century literature. It even misses the layering of THE HIGH WINDOW, leaving a fun read without as much depth. Worse, the twists, while they might surprise or confuse readers fed on the whodunit simplicity of Agatha Christie, are, for devoted Chandlerites, more obvious. I guessed the titular lady's secret soon after she was found in the lake, and it was not too difficult to tie in several - although, I admit, not all - later twists.

Still, Chandler is Chandler. His dry, intoxicating prose is here, as is his mastery of characterization. The most vivid supporting characters here are not Degarmo, the brutal cop heavy, nor Mr. Kingsley, the wealthy perfume baron, both of whom would fit into almost any Chandler novel. Rather, the scene-stealers are Bill Chess, the roughneck widower, and Sheriff Jim Patton, the law in a place that rarely needs him. These two are far removed from the Los Angeles back alleys, grimy motel rooms, rundown slums and mansions with plenty of closet space for skeletons that are Chandler's milieu, yet they become as real as old friends.

Ultimately, writing a review of a Chandler novel is almost a waste of time. His devoted fans - among whose numbers I readily count myself - will want to own this no matter how many stars I give it; and those who prefer locked room whodunits with quirky old lady detectives aren't even reading this. Still, to those interested in finding out why Chandler has engrossed readers for decades, don't start here. I'd recommend THE BIG SLEEP and FAREWELL, MY LOVELY as introductions, and THE LADY IN THE LAKE as a palate-cleanser once you're hooked.

Another noir classic by the master, in this episode detective Philip Marlowe finds crime as deadly in a lakeside resort as it is on the mean streets of the city of angels, and the body count mounts as the suspense builds and the plot twists. The character development is impeccable, the dialogue lively and bright and suitably sarcastic, and the plotting as convoluted as any Chandler classic would be likely to be.

The mountaintop setting for much of the story lends itself to some poetic prose from the sensitive tough-guy with an eye for beauty and an ear for simile. The narrative flows easily as Marlowe unwinds the mystery to it's inevitable conclusion, observing, lamenting, and condemning the corruption and injustice of the American social structure while withholding judgement from even the most vicious and violent, in his typically refreshing blend of cynicism and naivete.

The writing is spare and straightforward, but it's an illusion, an act of synergy, for the totality of effect is magnified beyond the sum total of the parts, proving that in literature as in art, less is more.

A 2007 summer reading list mini review.

I recently read a book celebrating the 100th birthday of Raymond Chandler. In the book, many current detective writers tell Phillip Marlowe stories and then explain the effect that Marlowe and Chandler had on their careers. The praise was glowing, and I picked up Lady in the Lake, to see if it was warranted. After the first chapter, I had an inkling the praise was justified. After the second, I knew.

The story of a Marlowe trailing an executives missing wife is excellent, but it is Chandler's use of language in dialogue that is amazing. The following exchange happens late in the book when a desk clerk uses the word whom and the crusty cop with Chandler is taken aback:

Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. 'Did he say, "whom"?'
'Yeah, but don't hit him' I said. There is such a word.'
Degarmo licked his lips. ' I knew there was,' he said ' I often wondered where they kept it. ...'

The wise cracking atmosphere through the maze of dead bodies and corrupt officials is why I like Marlowe so much. And while there have been so many imitators through the years, I am amazed how fresh and innovative Chandler seems in comparison. Chandler and Marlowe are definitely worthy of all the acclaim.

Raymond Chandler has always been known for his eloquent prose, and the masterful way he creates his settings, but many hard-core mystery fans have not loved the fact that he can sometimes sacrifice the disciplined, mathematical puzzle for creating an experience. Not so in "The Lady in the Lake", which offers a vivid portrayal of Marlowe, gritty depiction of 1940's southern California, and a riveting mystery that buttons up neatly at the climax. This book is a fabulous guide to another reality which will provide hours of entertainment.

I'd agree with just about everybody, this is great stuff by a master. He creates the atmosphere, he gets the style, he's got an endless supply of similes and fabulous bad quips, and of course the characters are terrific. Where this one resides in the canon doesn't interest me too much-I'm just glad he wrote more than Hammett did.

What's amusing is that his plots are so complicated that he sometimes loses control of them, most notoriously in TBS. Alcohol probably contributed here. [[SPOILER ALERT: In this one, I couldn't figure out why Talley was apparently at the scene of Florence Almore's death (to steal the slipper), when in fact he'd been hired later by her parents to investigate her death. And then by the end Talley has entirely disappeared from view; we didn't even need him, really. I mean, the bit with the slippers was a bit of a contrivance anyway, I'd say.]]

Some of the major plot turns are pretty obvious in this one, also, but that didn't really bother me. Overall it's so entertaining; these are just nitpicks. When I read Chandler, I feel like I'm home. The only problem is, reading him always makes me yearn for a shot of Jameson, and that's not always a good thing.

During the Second World War's 'lights-out' period, Raymond Chandler wrote two Philip Marlowe novels in quick succession. The overall results were mixed: 'The High Window' (1942) was judged by Chandler as his absolute worst novel and still lacks the popularity of his others. 'The Lady in the Lake' (1943), while a best-seller, has an unusual approach that seems rushed and not entirely convincing. Chandler, as it turned out, would not publish another Marlowe novel for six years (until 'The Little Sister' in 1949), choosing to deal with other projects that included a film version of 'The Big Sleep' starring Humphrey Bogart.

In 'The Lady in the Lake,' Chandler's fourth Marlowe novel, Philip is hired by a Los Angeles cosmetics executive, Derace Kingsley, to track down his wife, Crystal, who may have fled to Mexico with her extramarital lover. Marlowe is directed to the Kingsleys' vacation home on Little Fawn Lake in the rural California hills and faces a secondary murder case when he discovers an unidentifiable woman's body. Chandler again uses circular plotting, with Marlowe going through a nutty investigation before finding himself almost exactly where he began.

'The Lady in the Lake' is a rather odd detective story, in that Chandler tries to focus entirely upon character. The book is steeped in dialogue; there is very little action, with Marlowe drawing his gun just once and never firing it. Chandler is at his stylistic best in the rural scenes, where he uses quiet, empty landscapes to build tension. Most impressive are his descriptions of the settings and use of animals such as birds and squirrels to color the situation at hand. Chandler pulls off genuinely eerie moments whose solitude carries an omen, sometimes in broad daylight.

Unfortunately, 'The Lady in the Lake' wastes an opportunity to take Marlowe in new directions. Not enough time, for example, is spent at Little Fawn Lake; far too much of the novel reverts to inner-city houses and buildings, locations that are usual for Marlowe. Chandler fares brilliantly in the rural scenes, but we don't seem to hang around them for very long. Marlowe's investigation at Little Fawn Lake spans about fifty pages before we find ourselves back in a seedy hotel room.

For a novel that emphasizes character, Chandler only scrapes the psychology that 'The Lady in the Lake' wants so badly to focus upon. Most of the characters are standard noir types of only modest depth: the dandy businessman, the sly secretary, the rogue lover, the uncouth policeman. Chandler also seems distracted by America's growing involvement in the Second World War, with its population living in a kind of 'safe haven,' oblivious to the battles raging across Europe and Asia (save for Pearl Harbor). There are moments when Chandler reveals his irritation towards the U.S. military's growing presence and America's wartime economy. Coupled with the other rough edges, it sometimes feels as if Chandler just wants to get things over with.

And to top off this disappointment, Chandler's ending in which he reveals the murderer feels hacked out of a novel by Agatha Christie, one of the authors whom Chandler was known to dislike. Marlowe finds himself back in the Kingsley cabin at Little Fawn Lake and narrows down the suspects one by one, in typical whodunit fashion. The outcome isn't that much of a surprise and on the novel's last page, Chandler throws in a bungled message about the coming war. This ending feels tacked-on, as if Chandler wasn't entirely sure (or concerned) of how to end it.

Despite its strong points, 'The Lady in the Lake' is no match for such novels as 'Farewell, My Lovely' and 'The Long Goodbye.' The plot is very much a hit-and-miss affair, sometimes with effective twists and sometimes contrived. The Lady in the Lake's storyline just doesn't crackle the way it should. Dialogue is generally up to par for Chandler, but there are moments when the speech is too formal or stilted. The novel may have needed a rewrite, which never happened; after sixty years, 'The Lady in the Lake' is a serviceable novel that fails to deliver in the clutch.

Chandler will always be a superior crime novelist to most of his rivals. 'The Lady in the Lake' boasts a high level of craft and is worth sitting down for, but there are other Marlowe tales that could be read first. For curious readers and Marlowe completists, 'The Lady in the Lake' is available in a recent edition from Black Lizard, the crime label of Vintage Books. Black Lizard has released all of Chandler's Marlowe novels in art deco format with attractive cover art. 'The Lady in the Lake' is 266 pages long and retails at $13.95.

Chandler is notorious for beautiful prose and muddled plots, but most of the blame can be attributed to his first novel from 1939: The Big Sleep. Not every Chandler plot is confusing. Here we have Chandler at his prime with his fourth novel from 1943 and it has both a nice plot and all the famous prose. If you read some other comments about the plot COVER YOUR EYES!!! Part of the fun of the present book is the good plot. The less you know the better, until you finish, and I will not spill the beans on the beautiful plot.

If you are new to Chandler, start with this novel or his second novel Farewell, My Lovely or perhaps the collection of four short stories from the 1930s: Trouble Is My Business. I bought all seven novels and two books of short stories - The Simple Art of Murder is his other collection of short stories - and consider the nine books to be mini-treasures. Of course, his first novel The Big Sleep is his most famous novel, made famous by the Warner's movie starring Bogart and Bacall, but the plot leaves one's head spinning.

When Chandler was starting out as a writer, he had little money and was forced to live in very cheap housing in Santa Monica. There he saw the rampant police and city corruption in action where the powerful and the wealthy controlled the city. This was at odds with the citizen's perception that the city was law abiding, proper, and conservative. He uses that experience here as a partial theme of the novel, but he calls the town his fictional name of Bay City instead of Santa Monica. It is an extension of his earlier short story writing and his second novel Farewell, My Lovely. Detective Marlowe has his office in west LA - that is in Hollywood - and he seems to drift back and forth between LA and Bay City in many Chandler novels and short stories.

Now that he is famous as a writer, and moved out of Santa Monica in late 1940, he seems to pull out all the stops and hits Bay City police broadside with this present 1943 novel that involves some out of control police. This Chandler novel contains many of the elements of his famous "film noir" period, noir being the reference to police and civic corruption, a lawlessness in Los Angeles based detective stories that often reflected real news crime stories. As I mentioned briefly, the plot involves Santa Monica, i.e.: Bay City, but also it moves off into the countryside near where Chandler himself lived briefly in 1940, and there are a few chapters set in the mountains, but that is just part of the novel.

Like Chandler's other novels, it is one of the most beautifully written books ever published. The lines just flow and carry the reader along, seemingly effortlessly. The writing reminds me of some of Jack London's novels (1900) such as the Call of the Wild for the smoothness of the prose, but surprisingly Chandler might even be better and more refined. His technique was to pull old stories apart, then change them, then re-write them as short stories, and then take that work and extend it , modify it again a second or third time or even more, and finally put together complete novels. There is a high level of refinement and style that he was able to develop as a result of this writing process. This technique is not new. Shakespeare himself used this technique in virtually every play, taking old myths, stories, and historical accounts such as King Lear. He would break them apart, change them, and make new works with new twists, turns, and characters; his last play The Tempest is his thought to be his only completely original play. Chandler was aware of this parallel and would joke that if Shakespeare were alive he would be living in Hollywood working for the studios.

5 star classic stuff.

Except for PLAYBACK, there are no bad Raymond Chandler novels, there are only very good and great. THE LADY IN THE LAKE for the most part is close to great, though the transparency of the plot probably drops it to merely very good. Nonetheless, its virtues are the virtues of Chandler's best books, witty, unforgettable dialogue, marvelously drawn characters, and an attention to detail that places you on the scene of the crime. The book's vices are those of his other books: Chandler simply didn't care about plot. Except for PLAYBACK (where the problem with the book is that it takes Marlowe out of Los Angeles and like a fish out of water places him in a completely alien town), the problem with every Chandler book is the same, the minimal effort he expended on plot. Chandler realized (correctly, I believe) that plot was not the central element of a good book. If you say of a writer that they write great plots, it is usually taken as a backhanded compliment, meaning that they aren't good with prose, character, or setting. Even so, at least some attention should be given to plot. For Chandler it was something to be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible so that he could get on with the things that mattered to him. Of the Big Three of American hardboiled detective fiction (the other two being, of course, Dashiell Hammett and Ross MacDonald), Chandler was the weakest of the three with plot. But to prove how relatively unimportant an element plot is, the only one of the three to be good at plot, MacDonald, is usually considered the weakest of the three writers.

If you have ever read a detective story, you will instantly grasp that the lady in the lake isn't whom everyone assumes it is. It is so obvious that it is almost a tad insulting as a reader to have the plot device employed so early in the book. But from that moment on the book is an utterly delicious read, with a string of grotesque characters (in the original sense of the word), delightful misunderstandings, and devious dealings. If in his earlier books the persistent message was the hollowness and superficiality of greater Los Angeles, here it is extended to the rest of the state as well. The cynical mockery that Marlowe extends to his adopted homeland is unceasing. When Marlowe finally does admire or compliment someone or something, he means something. He doesn't praise easily.

The greatest part of any Chandler novel is the way he plays around with the English language. I usually don't mark or underline the novels I read (I underline nonfiction in pencil -- I think underlining in ink should be a federal crimes or at the very least books should be dispensed with a scary tag like pillows, making it sound like you will go to jail if you ink a volume), but I make an exception with Chandler. I love to pick up one of his books and go back and read the lines that most struck me at the time. Like:

Dergamo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. "Did he say 'whom'?"

"Yeah, but don't hit him," I said. "There is such a word."

Dergamo licked his lips. "I knew there was," he said. "I often wondered where they kept it."

Or there are the unexpected and striking metaphors: "'Go on,' he said, in a voice the size of a marble." Or "I let the remark fall to the ground, eddying like a soiled feather."

I think it is a mark of just how good Raymond Chandler is that despite writing in a disparaged genre, he has always been regarded by many writers and literary critics to be a great writer. Even in the forties many important arbiters of literary taste like Edmund Wilson recognized his talent. Ironically, Chandler's books, though they have long been critically acclaimed and have never gone out of print, were not big sellers. Though they made him a living, he had to work as a screenwriter to make most of his money (and he did some great work in Hollywood, having written some great screenplays like DOUBLE INDEMNITY for Billy Wilder [an imaginative adaptation of James Cain's short novel] and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN for Alfred Hitchcock]). Chandler probably has more readers today than he did while these books were being published. If by any bizarre chance someone is reading this review who hasn't read him, they should resolve to do so immediately. He truly is one of the best writers America has produced.