peering through the high window

Raymond Chandler's 1942 novel The High Window isn't his best-known or even his best work, but it is one of his better glimpses into the soul of Chandler's celebrated anti-hero/private eye Philip Marlowe.  There's a very rare coin, an elderly, port-drinking, ethically twisted bulldog of a wealthy widow, the widow's ineffectual son, a fragile and fractured secretary, a wannabe detective, along with the usual beautiful yet cold-hearted women, flinty cops, hoods and other memorable Chandleresque characters.

The plot fabric stretches a little thin at times and the ending has more humanity than dramatic payoff, but all in all, reading Raymond Chandler is a wonderful experience.  His narrative and dialogue are just so good that each page is enjoyable.  Chandler was undoubtedly a writer who adapted well to the screen -- as especially evidenced by The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely -- but it's a whole other experience to actually read his work.  Cinematic detective voiceover narration can only capture so much of the finely honed words and descriptions, and when it comes to using voiceover in movies, less always seems better than more.  But would you really want to miss snippets like these:

"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."

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"A large black and gold butterfly fishtailed in and landed on a hydrangea bush...moved its wings slowly up and down a few times, then took off heavily and staggered away through the motionless hot scented air."

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"She looked as flustered as a side of beef."

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"I had a funny feeling...as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again...."

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Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. -- Raymond Chandler