The High Window (Paperback)

by Raymond Chandler (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Chandler is not only the best writer of hardboiled PI stories, he's one of the 20th century's top scribes, period. His full canon of novels and short stories is reprinted in trade paper featuring uniform covers in Black Lizard's signature style. A handsome set for a reasonable price.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Raymond Chandler is a master." --The New York Times

?[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered.? --The New Yorker

?Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious.? --Robert B. Parker, The New York Times Book Review

?Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye.? --Los Angeles Times

?Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist.? ?The Boston Book Review

?Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler?s prose. . . . He wrote like an angel.? --Literary Review

?[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision.? --Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

?Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.? ?Ross Macdonald

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

?Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.? --Paul Auster

?[Chandler]?s the perfect novelist for our times. He takes us into a different world, a world that?s like ours, but isn?t. ? --Carolyn See

-- Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; First Edition Thus edition (July 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394758269
• ISBN-13: 978-0394758268
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #15,722 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like detective stories, look no further, August 16, 2000

By	Guy DuBlanc (USA) - See all my reviews

Raymond Chandler has written some excellent crime/mystery novels, and this is no exception. The High Window was Chandler's third novel with Philip Marlowe. But don't worry if you haven't read the first two (The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely) because The High Window could easily have been the first book.

This novel works for several reasons. First, it is very easy to read. This is a 'page-turner' in every sense of the term. Secondly, the story is interesting and always has your attention. Chandler unveils the story in a way that makes you want to keep reading. Finally, the characters are almost always well done. Of course, Philip Marlowe is a great character, an old tough guy with some great dialogue. Although the book was published in the early 1940's, it does not feel like it at all.

To those unaquainted with Chandler, the closest thing I could compare it to would be the 1974 movie CHINATOWN, written by Robert Towne. That's the style of it. It's different from Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

Give it a shot. Chances are it will grab you and you'll read it quickly.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best sledgehammer around, April 27, 1998

By	sandra mckinnon shelley (Richmond, Virginia) - See all my reviews

The High Window
by Raymond Chandler

The "High
Window" begins one hot day in Pasadena, when "everything
that grew was perfectly still in the breathless air they get over
there on what they call a nice cool day." If we don't know we are
in a Philip Marlowe novel yet, we do as soon as we meet his new
client--a wealthy, obese widow named Mrs. Murdock. From the
overgrown, dimly-lit sun room where she holds court, she gives Marlowe
his latest p.i. assignment. He's to find a rare coin, the Brasher
Doubloon, that was stolen from her possession. He's also to find her
daughter-in-law, a former nightclub singer named Linda Conquest, who
disappeared at the same time as the coin. "A charming girl--and
tough as an oak board," Mrs. Murdock tells him, through sips of
her port.

Marlowe's search for the pair leads to a tale more dense
and tangled than the thick foliage of his client's sun porch. He
quickly finds himself enmeshed with a rich gambler and his
philandering, showgirl wife; a thug with a frozen eye; and a mortician
who delves into politics. Marlowe also has to contend with the police
and a man in a sand-colored coupé who keeps tailing him. Then there
are the corpses that keep piling up in his path. There's also his
client, who has her own share of tightly-bound secrets. A
near-invalid who spends her days lying on a reed chaise lounge,
Mrs. Murdock still holds an iron grip on her effeminate son and the
fragile woman who works as her secretary.

The plot is fast-paced
and engrossing, but the real power of the novel lies in the snappy
dialogue and beautifully conveyed atmosphere. Chandler's style has
been copied endlessly by other writers over the past fifty years, but
no one can touch him. Marlowe's is a world filled with hard-eyed
Filipinos answering doors, nightclubs named the Tigertail Bar, and
women who are "all cigarettes and arched eyebrows and go-to-hell
expressions." Even his butterflies take off heavily and stagger
away "through the motionless hot scented air."

As with
the other Marlowe novels, there's the usual gratuitous wisecracks
exchanged with minor characters--the sourpuss maid; the streetwise
chauffeur; the old, watery-eyed elevator operator who breathed hard,
"as if he was carrying the elevator on his back." Despite his
cynical words, Marlowe holds a special place in his heart for the
losers in the world. He sends cash to a pitiful handwriting expert
and takes an inept detective under his wing. "The shop-soiled
Galahad," an associate calls him.

For the rest of the
characters, however, he has nothing but contempt. A tough man in a
tough world, Marlowe doesn't hide his true feelings under a bushel.
He describes the gambler's wife: "From thirty feet away she
looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like
something made up to be seen from thirty feet away." His
instructions to the portly Mrs. Murdock: "Tell her to jump in the
lake...Tell her to jump in two lakes, if one won't hold her."

Chandler's master stroke as a writer is hyperbole. Even his silences
are "as loud as a ton of coal going down a chute." He may
write with a sledgehammer, but it's the best sledgehammer around.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marlowe is Maturing, July 13, 2003

By	Lisa Shea "LisaShea.com" - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

In Chandler's third novel, Philip Marlowe is hitting his stride. He's getting his life under control, he's right on top of the bad guys, and his honorable intentions save the day.

In this outing, Chandler is hired by a rich woman to track down a missing coin. The woman assumes that a misbehaving family member has run off with it, but of course the story ends up far more complex than that and Marlowe wends his way through gritty LA streets in search of the truth.

Marlowe's penchant for doing the right thing is even more in evidence here, as he works to help out characters that many times don't realize they need help. He does it not for fame or fortune, but because it's the right thing to do.

Chandler's writing style shines with its usual brilliance, and he crafts his characters with an easy hand. He has brought Marlowe along from his initial hard-drinking despair into a detective who - buoyed with past successes - is now more comfortable with himself and taking better care of himself. The wit crackles, and the novel is as enjoyable and entertaining as anything Chandler has written.