Philip Marlowe Finds Himself in Another Very Tangled Mess

The High Window is another excellent novel featuring Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled L.A. detective, Philip Marlowe, although to my mind it's not quite on a par with Chandler's masterpieces, The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye.

The case opens when a wealthy, twice-widowed Pasadena woman named Elizabeth Bright Murdock hires Marlowe to discreetly recover a valuable coin that has been stolen from her first's husband's collection. The client insists that her daughter-in-law, whom she hates, has taken the coin although she has no proof. The daughter-in-law has either left or been driven from the home. Mrs. Murdock wants Marlowe to quietly find the woman and get the coin back. The police are most certainly not to be involved.

All in all, this is a pretty strange household that also includes Mrs. Murdock's wimpy son and a severely repressed young secretary whom the widow treats like a doormat. Marlowe takes the case, although he pretty much knows from the git-go that everyone is lying to him, including his client.

Well of course they are, and before long poor Marlowe is up to his neck in a case that involves gambling, infidelity, blackmail and a small handful of murders. As is the case with any Raymond Chandler plot, it's all pretty confusing, although in the end, this one gets sorted out better than most.

As always, it's great fun to follow Marlowe through these tangled webs and, as always, the book is beautifully written in a style that has often been imitated but never matched. Raymond Chandler and his tattered detective were each one of a kind.

A Classic crime Novel from George V. Higgins

The strength of this brilliant crime novel lies in the dialog, which constitutes about eighty percent of the book. George V. Higgins had an excellent ear and captures perfectly the voices of all of the characters who populate the book. I really have no idea what a group of typical run-of-the-mill criminals would actually sound like, but this is about the most realistic sounding group of crooks--and cops--that I've ever encountered in a novel.

At the center of the book is a small-time Boston criminal named Eddie Coyle, and the conceit of the book is that Eddie really doesn't have any friends. He has guys that he hangs out with and guys that he works with, and cops that he negotiates with, but none of them really gives a good goddamn about Eddie and anyone of them would sell him out for a tired dime.

Of course Eddie's not above dealing his "friends" either. He's in a real jam, having been convicted of driving a truck filled with stolen booze and he's looking at a long stretch in the pen. Eddie's convinced that he really can't do the time and he's looking to make a trade with the authorities that will get him off the hook.

Eddie's been supplying guns to a group of bank robbers. Perhaps he could give up the guy who's supplying him with the guns; perhaps he could give up the robbers themselves, but would either or both be enough to get the prosecutor to back off?

Clearly there's no honor among thieves, or among the cops, for that matter. These guys are all working stiffs, just trying to get through the day, irrespective of which side of the law they happen to reside on. There are no good guys and no bad guys in this tale; you find yourself rooting for Eddie simply because you sympathize with the poor mope and not because he embodies any recognizable virtues.

Again, it's the dialog that makes this book a classic. It has the ring of authenticity and listening to these guys scheme, negotiate, plead and promise becomes almost an intimate experience. It's a book that no fan of the crime genre should miss.