I read this book for reading challenge Back to the Classics 2022.
Classic Mystery. When I was young and foolish, I thought Chandler tended to over-writing and left too many obscurities (who killed the Sternwood chauffeur in The Big Sleep?). Nowadays more tolerant, I don’t blame Chandler for the silly metaphors and strained similes lesser writers of noir, drunken under his influence, threw at us in Fawcett Crest paperbacks in the Sixties. “She gave me the cool hard look a cat gives a mouse under a well-manicured paw.” In fact, Chandler is one of the few mystery writers that are worth re-reading.
The Lady in the Lake – Raymond Chandler
This story features Chandler's series protagonist, private eye Philip Marlowe. It takes place in California in 1942, so it has references to retro stuff like smoking stands, cheese glasses, and color combos like green and ivory. The US entry into the Second World War also plays a walk-on, though key, role in the climax.
Marlowe is hired by Derace Kingsley to find his wife. A cosmetics executive, Kingsley is well-off but precarious. Scandal would get him fired. Community property is a non-issue since his wife’s money – from bubbling crude in Texas - is hers alone. She’s been missing for a month, with the only trace of her a bizarre telegram sent from El Paso asking for a divorce. Kingsley needs reassurance that she’s okay because he’s edgy about her getting busted due to her drunk and disorderly behavior and thrill-seeking pursuit of shoplifting. Their love burned out some time ago.
With his realism and irony, Marlowe interviews a variety of curious characters: a womanizer boiling with violence, a drunk with esteem issues, a fluttery landlady, and a slow-talking small-town sheriff right out of the pulps, to name only a few. The cops are portrayed as so vicious and corrupt that one wonders if the police unions of the time complained to Chandler’s publishers. A dedicated cop muses that like politics, law enforcement needs men of the highest character but sometimes attracts and rewards the lowest.
In this book the reader will find the writing that made Chandler as respected and influential as the founder of the hard-boiled manner Dashiell Hammett: well-wrought sentences, evocative descriptions, funny turns of phrase, smooth but exciting rhythm, the seamless unfolding incidents, and crime situations as a way to examine the human condition. The hard-boiled epigrams aren’t too corny or contrived. Chandler does not indulge in the pessimism that assumes the world is more foul and evil, mean and dangerous, than it actually is. “Mean world syndrome,” incidentally, is common among people who listen to too many true crime podcasts and read too many dark noir thrillers.
This novel is firmly the classic mystery genre, with all the action pointing to a stunning reveal that leaves the reader gaping. I just didn't expect such a brilliant resolution.
Other books by Raymond Chandler: Click on the title to go
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