In Chandler’s third installment in the Marlowe series, The High Window, we see our cynical detective given a job by a cranky and boozy widow, Mrs. Murdock, to search for a rare coin that was allegedly swiped by her daughter-in-law. As is the case with many other Marlowe novels, the initial request to find someone or something is only the appetizer to the full scale mystery that eventually reveals itself before the reader’s eyes.

Inevitably, Phillip Marlowe, as is the case with many of the other in the series, will at some point realize that he is not being given all the facts, that he is being given the run around, and so, this is when Marlowe is at his best, his clever, witty, terse, best. Things just don’t add up. He can size up a situation and figure out people quite well. This includes motives. And when he realizes that this whole search for a precious coin, the Brasher Doubloon, is a case much, much more involved, then things get a little more interesting. More confusing, yes, but more interesting. Still, I think The High Window’s plot is fairly linear in many ways (in comparison to say, The Big Sleep); there are some convoluted aspects, but these are not too overly confusing. Although I did find the “explanation of everything” at the end a bit much, which is about the only beef I had with this novel.

I think that Marlowe is a little bit more restrained at points in this one, as opposed to the other two I’ve read in the series (The Lady in the Lake, The Big Sleep). I say this based on his treatments several of the minor characters in The High Window. While Marlowe is jaded, and cynical, he seems to have a morality about him on a higher plane in this one. Still, before you think the guy a saint, let’s just say he is willing to “tell it like it is” to anyone anytime.

And, Chandler was a pro at his craft. Let’s face it: Chandler’s prose is something exceptional. He can paint a scene, a mood, with a brush so eloquently that it becomes undeniable noir: “The ringing bell had a sinister sound, for no reason of itself, but because of the ears to which it rang. I stood there braced and tense, lips tightly drawn back in a half grin. Beyond the closed window the neon lights glowed. The dead air didn’t move. Outside the corridor was still. The bell rang in darkness, steady and strong.”

While the ending was a little too pact, this is still a fantastic crime novel.

The High Window is noir personified.

“All right,” he said wearily. “Get on with it. I have a feeling you are going to be very brilliant. Remorseless flow of logic and intuition and all that rot. Just like a detective in a book.”

“Sure. Taking the evidence piece by piece, putting it all together in a neat pattern, sneaking in an odd bit I had on my hip here and there, analyzing the motives and characters and making them out to be quite different from what anybody – or I myself for that matter – thought them to be up to this golden moment – and finally making a sort of world-weary pounce on the least promising suspect.”

I can safely say I have never yet had the pleasure of reading this Raymond Chandler novel, standing as it does in the shadows of such works as The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely. In this one, smooth and wise-cracking–this is how you know it’s American noir –Philip Marlowe essentially rescues a young lady by the name of Merle Davis--a secretary, a woman who seems to be particularly traumatized at the touch of men--from her employers.

As the novel opens Marlowe visits a potential client in Pasadena, Elizabeth Bright Murdock, a wealthy widow who seems to mistreat the above secretary and who thinks her daughter-in-law has taken her valuable Brasher Doubloon. Said daughter-in-law is estranged from her loser son, Leslie, who is steeped in gambling debts. So the missing Doubloon and a series of related heists, double-crosses and assorted murders, the whole dizzyingly complex/confusing plot, really, turn out to be just a kind of red herring to main things we discover in the novel: The rich characterization of detective Phillip Marlowe, and Chandler’s wonderful attention to language.

There’s also the usual noir collection of odd-ball characters: B-movie actors, tough guys with one eye or scars, and women with questionable names such as (ex-showgirl) Lois Magic and “singer” Linda Conquest, whom Marlowe assesses in a photograph:

"A wide cool go-to-hell mouth with very kissable lips.

You either like this smirking, wise-guy style or not, but of this style he is perhaps the very master. And sometimes when he is writing description, he is just great. Here’s some examples of both:

“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."

“A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.”

“She had pewter-colored hair set in a ruthless permanent, a hard beak and moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones.”

“I looked at the ornaments on the desk. Everything standard and all copper. A copper lamp, pen set and pencil tray, a glass and copper ashtray with a copper elephant on the rim, a copper letter opener, a copper thermos bottle on a copper tray, copper corners on the blotter holder. There was a spray of almost copper-colored sweet peas in a copper vase.

It seemed like a lot of copper.”

“. . . the old men with faces like lost battles.”

“Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled-down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; fly cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cokies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on them.”

“The white moonlight was cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find.”

Again, it's not my very favorite, but it is smooth, just like Kentucky Bourbon.

Raymond Chandler’s The High Window sees Philip Marlowe investigating the theft of a rare early American gold coin, the Brasher Doubloon. The case turns out also to involve blackmail and three murders. This is vintage Chandler. The plot is delightfully Byzantine. Marlowe, as usual, finds himself trying to resolve the case in such a manner that at least some vague semblance of justice is done. Which isn’t easy, since just about everybody has something nasty that they’re trying to hide. Chandler is worth reading just for his glorious prose, and his extraordinary ear for dialogue. Add to that one of the most fascinating and complex of all fictional detectives and you have some of the greatest crime writing of all time.