Refreshingly different and a tough mystery to crack. For a book with multiple murders - piecing together the plot is done very intelligently and you wait for the big reveal.

Rich unpleasant widow Elizabeth Murdoch hires Marlowe to recover a valuable coin which she suspects is stolen by her daughter-in-law. Nobody should know about this and he is not supposed to talk with the son. Never mind, as the son follows him along with a random detective who is following him and so do some really questionable characters. Till the body count starts.

What was different is that the book is filled with dislike-able people. You don't root for the client (whom you hate with all your heart even), you don't care for the case (seems ordinary) and you are just lead on by so many developments as you follow the detective. And the bodies keep piling - ones which you weren't even expecting.

Philip Marlowe seems to be doing a thankless job - doing things he doesn't like and still not sure what the angle is. And as he goes around discovering bodies and sometimes meddling with the crime scene - you feel sorry for him. A damn decent guy - if you will.

Conversations with the police when he lands in a tough spot is something you don't expect. We have conversations on justice, on what is right and professional ethics.

A mind-boggling puzzle put together smartly with the sensibilities of the 1940s America.

Terrific dialogue, disappointing and improbable ending. Lots of red herrings, but also lots of great scenes and characters. The story revolves around attempts to locate a stolen rare coin called the "Brasher Doubloon." The doubloon in question is about as meaningful or meaningless as the Maltese Falcon, but people do die because of it. If you enjoy "cracking wise" scenes, this is about as good as it gets. The smart assery is non-stop, and holds up surprisingly well after all these years. I mean, I laughed. A lot. I love a good zinger. It's one of those books you probably just go along for the ride, and not get too hung up over its eventual destination. I got the sense, as I was reading, that Chandler was holding back on things, hinting here and there at the unsavory this & thats of various sketchy characters. All those things that James Ellroy would indeed tell you later on.

(4.5) For hard-boiled detective fiction, this is the best I've read. Chandler is clever, full of wit, and truly a fantastic story teller.

Chandler sends us on a journey with PI detective Marlowe. Right away the character is put into action. He takes a job from the dubious, drunk Mrs. Murdock to discreetly track down a rare, stolen, coin and soon is tailed by her son Leslie and another PI Phillips who winds up getting killed. Accused by the police of Phillips' death, he must uncover the truth.

Chandler is excellent at characterization. Here's a snippet I liked when she is talking about Linda, her son Leslie's wife:

Mrs. Murdock: "I suppose she had parents. I was not interested enough to find out."

Marlowe: (thinking) Like hell she wasn't. I could see her digging with both hands, digging hard, and getting herself a double handful of gravel.

There are other real gems of dialog throughout.

Leslie Murdock: "Your tough guy act stinks."
Marlowe: "Coming from you, that's bitter."

One thing Chandler does is describe his characters well. Since there are so many, it helps the reader latch on more easily. When he refers back to one of them, he often gives us a physical feature we can latch on to. Not a lot of writers actually do that. For Merle Davis, it was the copper blond hair and shell-rimmed glasses with empty eyes. For Leslie Murdock, we see more of an effeminate wannabe.

I would recommend this book to anyone. It's a great story that keeps you going. Even if you're not a hard-boiled detective fan, you'll enjoy the excellent story telling by Raymond Chandler.

An enjoyable, if almost impossibly convoluted story about a stolen gold coin. Chandler has left behind the "nigger" slurs of Farewell, My Lovely - unless you count Marlowe's friendship with a "Negro" lawn jockey in Pasadena whom he pats on the head numerous times - and has moved on to Jews. There's "an old Jew" who owns a pawnshop and tries to bargain Marlowe down unseemlily; a "fat greasy sensual Jew with the tall stately bored showgirl;" Dr. Carl Moss - "a big burly Jew with a Hitler mustache, pop eyes and the calmness of a glacier," and again the pawnshop owner who "just grinned at me with his wise Jew face."

What can I say? It's Philip Marlowe as written by Raymond Chandler. How can it not be just what the doctor ordered? Granted, there are rumors that Chandler was less than thrilled by the final product but seriously, wouldn't you really prefer the worst of Raymond Chandler over the best of Baldacci?

4.5 stars

FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star - The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.

THE HIGH WINDOW is the third Philip Marlowe book by Raymond Chandler. I admit to being put off by FAREWELL MY LOVELY due to the racism displayed by our protagonist, even though it seemed like he was attempting to be sarcastic about it sometimes. This book, however, is a return to form as Philip is hired by an old wealthy matron to find a stolen Colonial American coin that may have been stolen by her daughter-in-law.

There's the usual twists and turns throughout the book and Philip makes some questionable decisions regarding the justice involved but that helps the story in the long run. I think I enjoyed most the fact that Philip's employ ABSOLUTELY HATES HIM and it leads to a lot of comedic scenes between the two. Philip won't take anyone's disrespect and can't be browbeaten and Mrs. Murdock can't help BUT verbally attack people who defy her or show sass.

Like all of Raymond Chandler’s novels, The High Window features private detective Philip Marlowe as first-person narrator reporting events unfolding as he attempts to crack a case in sun-soaked Los Angeles. I marvel at his perceptiveness and cleverness. Can anybody surpass Marlowe in his ability to see all the angles, to size people up, to catch all the clues, to ask the right questions, to crack wise at those times cracking wise is the wisest, to put the puzzle together so all the pieces fit in place? Maybe Sam Spade or other top dog dicks but that's about it. Oh, clever Odysseus, who fooled the Cyclopes, who heard the song of the Sirens and lived to tell the tale, Raymond Chandler gave you a rebirth as a private eye.

For anybody unfamiliar with Chandler, here is a snatch of dialogue taking place in Marlowe's office when a member of a very rich family comes to speak with the detective:

He looked me over without haste and without much pleasure. He blew some smoke delicately and spoke through it with a faint sneer.
"You're Marlowe?"
I nodded.
"I'm a little disappointed," he said. "I rather expected something with dirty fingers."
"Come inside," I said, "and you can be witty sitting down."
I held the door for him and he strolled past me flicking cigarette ash on the floor with the middle nail of his free hand. He sat down . . . He leaned back in his chair with the smile of a bored aristocrat.
"All set?" I inquired. "Pulse and respiration normal?" You wouldn't like a cold towel on your head or anything."

Through Marlowe, Chandler introduces us to a host of gangsters, crooks, con-artists, thugs, goons and their dames who take turns planning, threatening and committing violence as if they were flesh-and-blood members of the weasel patrol from Toontown.

Here is another bit of dialogue where Marlowe watches from behind a curtain as a shady nightclub manager speaks to his wife after they find his wife's boyfriend shot in the head:

Silence. Then the sound of a blow. The woman wailed. She was hurt, terribly hurt. Hurt in the depths of her soul. She made it rather good.
"Look, angel," Morny snarled. "Don't feed me the ham. I've been in pictures. I'm a connoisseur of ham. Skip it. You're going to tell me how this was done if I have to drag you around the room by your hair. Now - did you wipe off the gun?"

Philip Marlowe is not only an incredibly super-sharp observer, but he is also an intelligent, well-educated, highly ethical man. Two cases in point: when the name Heathcliff is mentioned, he knows the character is from Wuthering Heights and when someone shows him entries in a diary, he alludes to the Diary of Samuel Pepys.

This contrast between the crime and social grime of 1940s Los Angeles and the presence of Philip Marlow gives Chandler's work real abiding depth.

There are hundreds of authors, some very good, who have written detective fiction or crime fiction but what sets Raymond Chandler apart is the polished literary language matching any American author, including the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Falkner.

This is the prime reason I have included the above quotes and the reason I will end this review with another sparkling vintage Chandler quote, this one where Marlowe describes the woman he sees when being led by a tall, dark, olive skinned crook to the back yard of a suburban LA mansion:

"A long-limbed languorous type of showgirl blond lay at her ease in one of the chairs, with her feet raised on a padded rest and a tall misted glass at her elbow, near a silver ice bucket and a Scotch bottle. She looked at us lazily as we came over the grass. 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. Her mouth was too wide, her eyes were too blue, her makeup was too vivid, the thin arch of her eyebrows was almost fantastic in its curve and spread, and the mascara was so thick on her eyelashes that they looked like miniature iron railings."

Philip Marlowe is sniffing around again in Chandler's pitch-perfect written The High Window. Old lady Murdock hires him to find a lost coin of significant value and, while he's at it, break up her son's marriage to a nightclub singing floozy. What could go wrong, right? There's shady dealings and murky relationships to be uncovered as Marlowe hits the streets. Will the death and dysfunction he encounters along the way deter him from putting all the pieces together? Well, I suppose you'll have to read and find out.

Raymond Chandler was the Miles Davis of crime fiction. He invented cool.

How can I not love a detective novel that includes allusions to Wuthering Heights and the Diary of Pepys? The reference to Marlowe as a Galahad figure is especially apt in this installment of the Marlowe novels; the ethical code Marlowe follows is explicitly stated and (it seems to me) more central to his internal conflict than in the other novels. While Chandler's noir focuses on the underbelly of American life, the level of individual corruption (the psychological exploitation of Merle Davis) is far more cruel and devious than plot threads in other novels. Marlowe's handling of Merle and his odious employer are what make him such a compelling character.

I loved this book. I was expecting a story about a hard-boiled detective. I expected it to be little dated in some of its attitudes, given the time it was written. I was correct in both those.

What I was not expecting was humour. Which, judging from the other reviewers' frequent mention of the wit that is Chandler, only proves that I've been living under a rock most of my life, but truly, I was surprised, and delighted to be!

"A check-girl ... came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins." (p. 136) The first sentence made me grin. The second ... what the hell does it mean, really? Who knows, but isn't it evocative? I'd love to have someone describe my eyes that way. Hee.

I love, love, love his imagery:
"Women who should be young but have faces like stale beer."
"Her hair was as artificial as a night club lobby."

And his so-clever descriptions of people, which pack so much information into so few words:
"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."

For me, the solve-the-mystery part was secondary to the fun of the words. This is my first Chandler book, but I'll certainly be reading the other!

He disfrutado mucho, a pesar de ser una edición antigua. Me gustan las ediciones antiguas. Son muy Chandler. Son muy Marlowe.
Es una lectura muy divertida y entretenida. He reído mucho con el cinismo marlowiano. A quién le guste el auténtico Marlowe, le gustará "The High Window".

★★★☆☆ 3.5 stars