- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (7 July 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140108939
- ISBN-13: 978-0140108934
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 108,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The High Window: A Philip Marlowe Mystery
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA gets cops' noses out of joint. If Marlowe doesn't wrap this one up fast, he's going to end up in jail - or worse, in a box in the ground ...
About the Author
Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The house was on Dresden Avenue in the Oak Knoll section of Pasadena, a big solid cool-looking house with burgundy brick walls, a terra-cotta tile roof, and a white stone trim. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The house was on Dresden Avenue in the Oak Knoll section of Pasadena, a big solid cool-looking house with burgundy brick walls, a terra-cotta tile roof, and a white stone trim. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
You don't like me very well?.... Does anybody?
Every writer is faced with the question. What is it about?
I wonder how Raymond Chandler answered this question. His plots are so convoluted that it would be difficult for him to have told anyone.
I have been promising myself for years to read all the novels of Raymond Chandler because he is a master of lean sharp prose. Philip Marlowe is a wisecracking private eye. The plot is that he gets called in by Mrs Murdock to find a rare old coin that she claims was stolen by her daughter in law who she does not like and that he is to keep is quiet as she does not want the police involved.
Marlowe takes on the job not that she likes Mrs Murdock who seems to have no redeeming features. He goes in search of it and tracks it down whilst having unexplained murders happening around him.
I am sure Chandler had no idea how the story was going by just had people killed and and gave himself the task of giving an explanation at the end. The stories are in the first person so we can only see and know what Marlowe knows as he goes along.
I was determined to get to the end of the book but the journey is the best part as the dialogue and prose sparkles with great lines and descriptions.Even though the story is set in 1940s California is does not sound like a period piece or out of date.
I read it slowly to soak up and absorb the words and language used. Marlowe has a soft side and helps out the underdog in this case being Mrs Murdock's secretary who she treats badly but we do not know why.
Treat yourself start reading Raymond Chandler these are top of the range books and you are in for a treat. I am moving on to all the other novels. I have seen all the films but the novels are where it all started
Every writer is faced with the question. What is it about?
I wonder how Raymond Chandler answered this question. His plots are so convoluted that it would be difficult for him to have told anyone.
I have been promising myself for years to read all the novels of Raymond Chandler because he is a master of lean sharp prose. Philip Marlowe is a wisecracking private eye. The plot is that he gets called in by Mrs Murdock to find a rare old coin that she claims was stolen by her daughter in law who she does not like and that he is to keep is quiet as she does not want the police involved.
Marlowe takes on the job not that she likes Mrs Murdock who seems to have no redeeming features. He goes in search of it and tracks it down whilst having unexplained murders happening around him.
I am sure Chandler had no idea how the story was going by just had people killed and and gave himself the task of giving an explanation at the end. The stories are in the first person so we can only see and know what Marlowe knows as he goes along.
I was determined to get to the end of the book but the journey is the best part as the dialogue and prose sparkles with great lines and descriptions.Even though the story is set in 1940s California is does not sound like a period piece or out of date.
I read it slowly to soak up and absorb the words and language used. Marlowe has a soft side and helps out the underdog in this case being Mrs Murdock's secretary who she treats badly but we do not know why.
Treat yourself start reading Raymond Chandler these are top of the range books and you are in for a treat. I am moving on to all the other novels. I have seen all the films but the novels are where it all started
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I collect thrillers. They make life bearable in the face of lousy weather and incompetent and dishonourable 'bankers'. Raymond Chandler's suoper prose lift me above all this. He's the one who made it all happen, and this is another fine read. Read it before you die.
Format:Kindle Edition
The third Marlowe and possibly the least known. A mixture of blackmail and murder in sweaty Pasadena.
It opens with echoes of The Big Sleep. This time it is an aging matriarch, Mrs Murdock, who recruits Marlowe, rather than the patriarch General Sternwood. Chandler plays on the 'inner hostility' between Murdoock and Marlowe including the brilliant line, 'We looked at each other with the clear innocent eyes of a couple of used-car salesmen'.
These one-liners are more sparingly used than in the first two novels.The homophobia and anti-semitism are removed and greater restraint applies to the use of drugs, sex and violence. The higher moral tone also extends to a more sympathetic hearing for the police with an attempt at proper characterisation via the cops Breeze and Spangler. It is tempting to wonder about the impact of WW2 on Chandler's style.
Even Marlowe himself is given a bit of a wash and brush-up; 'I'm not tough. Just virile'. He displays a soft side towards the underprivileged earning the soubriquet, 'a shop-soiled Galahad'.
As in The Big Sleep, this novel sometimes feels like two short stories welded together. ' I haven't bought anything and I haven't paid for anything. Now go away' the sozzled Murdock tells Marlowe, yet still he persists with a seemingly closed investigation.
Chandler portrays Morny, the night-club owner and ex-actor as 'Every action, every gesture .. right out of the catalogue' and my only tiny reservation over this novel is to what extent Chandler felt some of the writing was becoming 'out of the catalogue'.
This novel flew past and is much less convoluted than his earlier work. If you are already a Chandler fan or becoming one, please note that The Lady in the Lake and Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics) is much better value than buying these novels individually.
It opens with echoes of The Big Sleep. This time it is an aging matriarch, Mrs Murdock, who recruits Marlowe, rather than the patriarch General Sternwood. Chandler plays on the 'inner hostility' between Murdoock and Marlowe including the brilliant line, 'We looked at each other with the clear innocent eyes of a couple of used-car salesmen'.
These one-liners are more sparingly used than in the first two novels.The homophobia and anti-semitism are removed and greater restraint applies to the use of drugs, sex and violence. The higher moral tone also extends to a more sympathetic hearing for the police with an attempt at proper characterisation via the cops Breeze and Spangler. It is tempting to wonder about the impact of WW2 on Chandler's style.
Even Marlowe himself is given a bit of a wash and brush-up; 'I'm not tough. Just virile'. He displays a soft side towards the underprivileged earning the soubriquet, 'a shop-soiled Galahad'.
As in The Big Sleep, this novel sometimes feels like two short stories welded together. ' I haven't bought anything and I haven't paid for anything. Now go away' the sozzled Murdock tells Marlowe, yet still he persists with a seemingly closed investigation.
Chandler portrays Morny, the night-club owner and ex-actor as 'Every action, every gesture .. right out of the catalogue' and my only tiny reservation over this novel is to what extent Chandler felt some of the writing was becoming 'out of the catalogue'.
This novel flew past and is much less convoluted than his earlier work. If you are already a Chandler fan or becoming one, please note that The Lady in the Lake and Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics) is much better value than buying these novels individually.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Fine Marlowe Novel
"He lay crumpled on his back. Very lonely, very Dead. The safe door was wide open. a metal drawer was pulled out. It was empty now. There may have been money in it once. Read more
Published 10 months ago by M. D. Jenkins
Good, but not great
Philip Marlowe is on the trail of the Brasher Doubloon, a rare coin taken from a collection. Marlowe is hired by the widow of the owner of the coin collection. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mr. Gribbs
the high window
What more can one say about Raymond Chandler,the master of this genre.
There is no one around that even comes near him, for his wit,cynicism and obsrvations on the world... Read more
There is no one around that even comes near him, for his wit,cynicism and obsrvations on the world... Read more
Published 16 months ago by francophile
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