Clint Jones's Reviews > The High Window

The High Window is not ultimately dull, but it has a milder, more shopworn tone compared to the previous Philip Marlowe novels. Elizabeth Murdock hires Marlowe to retrieve a valuable coin, suspecting her daughter-in-law stole it, summed up here:

Something of considerable value has been stolen from me. I want it back, but I want more than that. I don't want anybody arrested. The thief happens to be a member of my family--by marriage.

Chandler uses unique, descriptive and visual prose:

... two open windows with net curtains that puckered in and out like the lips of a toothless old man sleeping.

There was nothing much in her expression now except that I didn't really think she realized that I was there. I was a voice coming out of somewhere, but rather impersonal. Almost a voice in her own head.

His eyes had almost disappeared into the back of his head. They were doomed eyes.

On the air of the room a rather heavy perfume struggled with the smell of death, and lost. Although defeated, it was still there.

Dry, sarcastic humor is still in the arsenal:

From thirty feet away [Mrs. Morny] looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.

"Is all this on the level--or are you just being smart? I mean about all the important guys you don't know?"

"It's on the level," I said. "But the way I am using it is smart."

Yet in many cases it falls short with bombs like these:

I was about as much use as a hummingbird's spare egg would have been.

He was about as excited as a hole in the wall.

In the chapter that provides the reveal, Chandler takes an ironic jab at detective fiction cliches that only manages to self-consciously limp along:

"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."

Worst of all a key clue is repeatedly telegraphed all in the same space. It's reinforcement that Chandler doesn't need to offer, when his limited approach to a tight plot fails so often in his body of work:

... A man leaning out of a high window. A long time ago.

... A man leaning out of a high window. A long time ago.

... A man leaning out of a high window. A long time ago.

It's not unusual for Chandler to include a certain level of political commentary, as he does here. His approach is light but effective.

"The trouble with revolutions," he said, "is that they get in the hands of the wrong people."

Here he gives a nod to the up-and-coming noir genre:

... The man in the black shirt and yellow scarf was sneering at me over the New Republic.

"You ought to lay off that fluff and get your teeth into something solid, like a pulp magazine," I told him....

The end result is that The High Window leaves a very neutral impression. Much time and effort is devoted to physical description of the setting. Rooms are fully furnished, people methodically light cigars. The violence is toned down. Chandler seems a bit trapped by his own success, unable to surpass his earlier achievements. Luckily there are more novels to follow that are much more rewarding.