The Lady in the Lake

A remarkable picture of southern California in 1942: the war is still in the background, but its effects are starting to be felt. Crime has not taken any break. Marlowe is hired by a somewhat sympathetic client, for a change. The detective is in a contemplative middle age, skeptical and ironic but not embittered.

Lost interest as it seemedd rather dated. Dialogue was snappy 60 years ago but now seem trivial. Plot build up lost me with all the conflicting characters. I have read better books than this. Don't waste your time.

This is kind of a cornball mystery, written decades ago. The dialog is a bit cheesy and it reminds me of those old Bogart movies.
I kept seeing this novel referred to as one of the "best" mystery novels of all time (on various lists) so I figured I would go ahead and read the thing.
The plot keeps you interested but it is definitely not as sensational or fast moving as some of the current mysteries.

The Lady in the Lake

Derace Kingsley works for a cosmetics company and wants to locate his missing wife. Philip Marlowe is given the job. Crystal sent a telegram saying she was going for a Mexican divorce. But Chris Lavery doesn't know anything. Across the street Dr. Almore watches Marlowe. So Marlowe drives to Little Fawn Lake to inspect Crystal's last known location. He talks to the caretaker Bill Chess, and learns Chess' wife Muriel left him the same day. They walk around the lake and onto the little pier. There is something below the water, Chess' missing wife is found (Chapter 6)! Sheriff Patton questions Bill Chess (Chapter 8). Birdie Keppel, the part time newspaper reporter, talks to Marlowe. Six weeks earlier a man was looking for a woman whose photograph resembled Muriel (Chapter 9). Sheriff Patton knew his country and where to look. Muriel's car was hidden away in shed (Chapter 11). Marlowe searched the cabin again and found a clue (Chapter 12).

Marlowe returned to talk to Lavery, but he wasn't home. A woman came up the steps, talked to Marlowe, then ran out. Marlowe then found Lavery, but he didn't say anything (Chapter 16). We learn more about Dr. Almore's wife and local politics (Chapter 19). The police arrive at Lavery's house (Chapter 21). Marlowe gets another lead (Chapter 22). The parents of Dr. Almore's dead wife tell Marlowe about their suspicions (Chapter 23). He hears the name "Mildred" as Dr. Almore's missing nurse. We learn more facts about the case (Chapter 28). Marlowe brings money to Crystal and learns what happened (Chapter 31). Then he is knocked out (Chapter 32).Crystal won't talk now. The police arrive but Marlowe left before this. Marlowe tells Lt. Degarmo what he surmised about Mildred and what she did (Chapter 36). There is more about Crystal's fate (Chapter 38)! Marlowe surmises what happened when Crystal and Muriel both disappeared at the same time (Chapter 39). Marlowe guesses what happened when he was sapped and receives confirmation of his guess (Chapter 40). There is an end to the mystery (Chapter 41). It will be kept out of the newspapers.

Having read more than a few mystery novels I picked up on the clue where two women disappeared at the same time, and both looked similar. Mistaken identity was often used by Erle Stanley Gardner in his many novels. This story reminded me of "The Case of the Screaming Woman" as a story about life among the rich and powerful. It also reminded me of the novel "Farewell, My Lovely", and the short story "No Crime in the Mountains". A mistaken identification is part of Dashiell Hammett's "Golden Horseshoe" short story. Note how the villains are not the usual suspects of the poor and lower class of society.

The Lady in the Lake is a wonderful read, especially if you are reading Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe series. In this fourth installment of the Philip Marlowe series, Marlowe is paid by a wealthy business man to track down hismissing wife who has run away to Mexico in order to get remarried. While investigating, Marlowe stumbles upon a body of a woman in a lake. Soon he is dealing with dirty cops, hustlers, and elusive women and more murder as he continues to investigate.
The Lady in the Lake is a funnier read than the rest of Chandler's work. While he does use dark humor throughout all of his novels, this one has characters that are not only darkly funny but are laugh out loud funny, while not taking away from the mystery aspect. The mystery unwinds nicely, almost poetically in fact. The action is well paced. Best of all, the dialougue is extremely witty and sarcastic.
What makes this rather different from the previous books in the series is the constant mention of the war. Between characters who are wounded veterans returning from the war or men who are about to leave for basic training this book shows the impact of the conflict on society. While briefly mentioned here and there in the novel, WWII is a huge aspect of the pulp/ noir genre. There was a more cynical shift in the postwar years, making writers like Chandler and Cain even more popular.
If you enjoyed this I would recommend Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler and also the film The Lady in the Lake starring Robert Montgomerry.

Philip Marlowe is hired to find a missing woman, but soon there are two mising women and a woman's body recovered from a lake after a long time under water. Marlowe finds himself commuting between a mountain resort and Los Angeles. He works with a likeable law officer in the mountains and he must deal with the nasty corruption of the Bay City Police. All of the Chandler elements are here: atmosphere, similes and wit. But more than any other Chandler novel, this novel has a classic mystery at its core. This is one of Chandler's finest novels, but the short story on which it is based is even better

Straying missing wives. Bodies where bodies shouldn't be. Cops with extracurricular activities. Sounds like another day in the life of Philip Marlowe, the private detective who must either really love his job or is too afraid to go out and get a real one. You have to wonder how the poor guy makes any money, even though he seems to have no shortage of work the cases he does get quickly become so overcomplicated that the time and expense involved almost seem to negate the amount of money he would make. Good thing he doesn't have expensive taste.

But one of the joys of reading a Marlowe story is watching what seems at first to be a simple case slowly but with gathering speed spiral almost completely out of his control, while Marlowe remains in the center more or less unflappable. You get the sense that he's a guy who if he hasn't seen everything, at the very least can imagine it. And for enough money, maybe he'll even stop it.

Here, a lot goes wrong in a very short period of time. A rich businessman hires Marlowe to figure out where his wife went after she sends him a weird telegram stating she's getting a divorce and marrying her lover. Standard stuff, except the lover has no idea what this is all about. It doesn't take long for the titular lady to make an appearance and throw the case out of whack entirely, as all these threads that shouldn't connect start to intertwine together in ways that keep trying to strangle poor Marlowe. Before long, people who should be culprits are dead, people who have been dead for a long time are figuring in the case, the local police are ticked off and Marlowe alternates between being a punching bag and having guns pointed at him. It's enough to make anyone question their dedication to the cause but what makes the Marlowe novels so interesting is how our favorite detective is so unswerving. In a sense he's no angel but even his shade of grey is far cleaner than almost everyone else in the vicinity. Marlowe may be the last person to nominate himself for sainthood but time and time again he's the most honest person in the room by a longshot, maybe because he has nothing to lose and nothing to hide, or because he likes getting punched for saying things that people don't want to hear.

Some folks have commented that this is the weakest of the Marlowe stories (relatively speaking) and in a sense it comes across as the lightest. Especially when the last two novels I've read are "The Big Sleep" and "Farewell My Lovely", Chander's two candidates for literary immortality. Coming off those two novels would be a tough act for any novel to follow but what's freeing about this one is that there aren't any grand literary aspirations. Yes, it does lack the thematic depth of the other two novels, so what we're left with is basically a rather solid mystery with the best narrator and tour guide one can imagine. But it allows us to focus more on the mystery itself, which won't be a headscratcher to anyone who has read more than a few mysteries (the likely explanation for the lady in the lake winds up being the obvious one, but it is only the obvious one if you live inside a detective novel) but has enough twists and turns to keep the principals busy for two hundred sixty some odd pages it takes to wrap things up (with a bang, as it turns out). What makes this one more interesting is how it takes Marlowe for a little while out of his comfort zone, driving him out to the countryside to investigate the country cottage where the straying wife sometimes stayed. After so many scenes of gritty alleys and claustrophobic high rises, the open space makes for a change of pace and Marlowe's reactions to the new surroundings and the people that he meets there (two of the most fascinating characters in the book and like him, uniquely suited to their environments) make this one stand out.

But in the meantime there's plenty of atmosphere and oodles of Chandler's ability to describe something in the most poetically noirish way to do so. How he manages not to repeat himself is impressive. As usual the book functions as a mood piece as much as a piece of puzzle-filled entertainment and one of the most striking scenes is a brief chapter where Marlowe just basically sits in his office and silently ruminates. Even though Marlowe narrates, it still functions as a silent scene, with lines like "I sat very still and listened to the evening grow quiet outside the open windows. And very slowly I grew quiet with it" conveying not just the texture of an evening but the utter weariness of a man tired of pushing himself to solve crimes, but unable to stomach a crime not being solved. It's Chandler's magic way of painting with such deft minimalist strokes, where Marlowe constantly talks but somehow only says exactly what he needs to say, sketching a world with charcoal shadows where the spaces suggested and the spaces unseen hold the real and true stories, with only Marlowe brave enough to go in and bring back word of what we'd rather not see.

The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler's fourth Philip Marlowe novel, was written just a few months after Pearl Harbor (published in 1943) but there are surprisingly few references to the war in it. Perhaps this reflects Chandler's take on how the war affected Americans of the day - that, unless a son or husband was in the military, everyday life went on pretty much as normal. Or maybe he simply did not want to clutter up his murder mystery with too many references to such a catastrophic world event. Whatever his reasoning may have been, The Lady in the Lake still holds up well when compared to most of the crime fiction being produced today.

Philip Marlowe has been hired by Derace Kingsley, a perfume company tycoon, to find his missing wife, a woman Kingsley believes has run off to Mexico with her lover. As a place to begin his search, Kingsley points Marlowe in the direction of the couple's remote getaway cabin located in the California hills on Little Fawn Lake. While being shown around the site, Chandler and the property's caretaker, Bill Chess, spot a woman's body in the shallow waters of the lake. That is when Chandler realizes that he is dealing with something much more complicated than the search for a man's runaway wife.

Raymond Chandler is deservedly well known for his noir fiction and The Lady in the Lake is representative of that style. The novel is filled with strong characters bordering on what have become almost stereotypical types in noir fiction, all of whom play their parts well but offer little in the way of surprises. Derace Kingsley is the hard headed businessman who has little time or respect for those who do not play in his league. Al Degarmo is a brutal cop so confident and high on himself because of his unchallenged power on the streets that he has no fear of ever being exposed. On the other hand, two of Chandler's characters do have a nice feel of authenticity about them: Bill Chess, the cantankerous caretaker at Little Fawn Lake, and Sheriff Jim Patton whose jurisdiction includes the lake area. Patton, in particular, is one of those memorable characters with whom most readers will easily identify.

The flaw in The Lady in the Lake appears late. As the book nears its finish, Chandler's hardcore style morphs into what more resembles the Agatha Christie school of cozy detective fiction endings. Trapped in a small cabin with the person he believes is a coldblooded killer and the lawman that can make the arrest, Marlowe begins a monologue during which he notes and eliminates, one-by-one, the possible suspects. Marlowe does manage to spook his suspect into a fatal mistake, but it is always a letdown to the reader to have so much action take place "offstage."

The Lady in the Lake is not considered classic Chandler in the way that The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and Farewell, My Lovely are, but Chandler fans will not want to miss it.

While Dracula, James Bond and Sherlock Holmes continue to be featured in movies, Philip Marlowe seems to have disappeared. I'm not sure why. Certainly, some of the previous adaptations have been among the best mystery films. Murder, My Sweet (an adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely) is arguably the first noir film. The Long Goodbye with Eliot Gould showed that Marlowe could transcend his WWII-era roots. And, of course, The Big Sleep is considered a true classic.

Surely the most off-beat of the Marlowe adaptations would be The Lady in the Lake starring Robert Montgomery, a 1947 movie that showed everything from Marlowe's point-of-view. The source material for this film was the Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, which like most of his books, is a nice gem.

The book opens with Marlowe hired by Derace Kingsley, a wealthy businessman who is seeking his missing wife. She disappeared around a month ago and was assumed to have run off with a ladies' man named Lavery; when Kingsley realizes this isn't the case, he brings in Marlowe.

During the course of the investigation, Marlowe goes to Kingsley's Puma Lake cabin, where the caretaker's wife turns up drowned (hence the title). This is the first of several dead bodies that will turn up in the course of the book.

Savvy mystery readers will pick up on the key twist easily enough, though it may have been more novel at the time. With a Chandler book, however, it's not the resolution that matters as much as the journey to get there: the wonderful Marlowe narrative brings alive the era in a way that a modern writer can't. It's not merely the descriptions but the voice of Marlowe that makes this book - almost 70 years old - seem a delight to read even nowadays.

Sometimes when I read Chandler I wish he could have found a way to break out of the formula and really let his imagination loose--just let all the poetry and over-too-soon bit parts fill the page. He seems more interested in everything else than the so-called plot. But on the other hand, maybe he hit it just right. The weirdness that is so compelling on the periphery of his writing might fall apart under the harsh light of center stage.

Chandler's passing-glance encounters always have the quality of real, observed life. One of the least fussy writers who ever lived, his descriptions are effortlessly evocative. Here's Marlowe entering an empty house: "The room had a hushed warm smell, the smell of late morning in a house not yet opened up....In the silence time passed. It passed in the dry whirr of the electric clock on the mantel, in the far-off toot of an auto horn on Aster Drive, in the hornet drone of a plane over the foothills across the canyon, in the sudden lurch and growl of the electric refrigerator in the kitchen." Chandler's gift was essentially lyrical.

Except for PLAYBACK, there are no bad Raymond Chandler novels, there are only very good and great. THE LADY IN THE LAKE for the most part is close to great, though the transparency of the plot probably drops it to merely very good. Nonetheless, its virtues are the virtues of Chandler's best books, witty, unforgettable dialogue, marvelously drawn characters, and an attention to detail that places you on the scene of the crime. The book's vices are those of his other books: Chandler simply didn't care about plot. Except for PLAYBACK (where the problem with the book is that it takes Marlowe out of Los Angeles and like a fish out of water places him in a completely alien town), the problem with every Chandler book is the same, the minimal effort he expended on plot. Chandler realized (correctly, I believe) that plot was not the central element of a good book. If you say of a writer that they write great plots, it is usually taken as a backhanded compliment, meaning that they aren't good with prose, character, or setting. Even so, at least some attention should be given to plot. For Chandler it was something to be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible so that he could get on with the things that mattered to him. Of the Big Three of American hardboiled detective fiction (the other two being, of course, Dashiell Hammett and Ross MacDonald), Chandler was the weakest of the three with plot. But to prove how relatively unimportant an element plot is, the only one of the three to be good at plot, MacDonald, is usually considered the weakest of the three writers.

If you have ever read a detective story, you will instantly grasp that the lady in the lake isn't whom everyone assumes it is. It is so obvious that it is almost a tad insulting as a reader to have the plot device employed so early in the book. But from that moment on the book is an utterly delicious read, with a string of grotesque characters (in the original sense of the word), delightful misunderstandings, and devious dealings. If in his earlier books the persistent message was the hollowness and superficiality of greater Los Angeles, here it is extended to the rest of the state as well. The cynical mockery that Marlowe extends to his adopted homeland is unceasing. When Marlowe finally does admire or compliment someone or something, he means something. He doesn't praise easily.

The greatest part of any Chandler novel is the way he plays around with the English language. I usually don't mark or underline the novels I read (I underline nonfiction in pencil -- I think underlining in ink should be a federal crimes or at the very least books should be dispensed with a scary tag like pillows, making it sound like you will go to jail if you ink a volume), but I make an exception with Chandler. I love to pick up one of his books and go back and read the lines that most struck me at the time. Like:

Dergamo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. "Did he say 'whom'?"

"Yeah, but don't hit him," I said. "There is such a word."

Dergamo licked his lips. "I knew there was," he said. "I often wondered where they kept it."

Or there are the unexpected and striking metaphors: "'Go on,' he said, in a voice the size of a marble." Or "I let the remark fall to the ground, eddying like a soiled feather."

I think it is a mark of just how good Raymond Chandler is that despite writing in a disparaged genre, he has always been regarded by many writers and literary critics to be a great writer. Even in the forties many important arbiters of literary taste like Edmund Wilson recognized his talent. Ironically, Chandler's books, though they have long been critically acclaimed and have never gone out of print, were not big sellers. Though they made him a living, he had to work as a screenwriter to make most of his money (and he did some great work in Hollywood, having written some great screenplays like DOUBLE INDEMNITY for Billy Wilder [an imaginative adaptation of James Cain's short novel] and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN for Alfred Hitchcock]). Chandler probably has more readers today than he did while these books were being published. If by any bizarre chance someone is reading this review who hasn't read him, they should resolve to do so immediately. He truly is one of the best writers America has produced.

The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler.
I picked up this CD at my public library not realizing it was a drama/play with a cast of characters/actors. It was fabulous...love every moment.
This was Philip Marlowe at his best and Raymond Chandler as the author sat his zenith. I can't recommend it highly enough and try to get the play/drama. It's excellent, not a boring moment in the play

Wayward wives seems to be the theme of Raymond Chandler's fourth Philip Marlowe novel, "The Lady in the Lake." A man named Derace Kingsley hires Marlowe to find his missing wife Crystal, who has run away with a playboy named Chris Lavery. The problem is that Lavery is back in Los Angeles and claims he doesn't know where Crystal is. Then Marlowe finds out about the apparent suicide of the wife of a doctor that Crystal had been seeing. Searching for clues in Kingsley's cabin in the mountains outside San Bernardino, Marlowe meets Bill Chess, the caretaker of the cabin, who lamentably tells Marlowe that his own wife had left him recently. Shortly thereafter, Marlowe and Chess find the corpse of a woman drowned in a lake near Kingsley's cabin.
To reveal any more information would not so much spoil any surprises as it would be a maddening exercise in convoluted logic. The plot is so highly complicated, in fact, that Chandler seems to have attempted to outdo even the novel's three predecessors ("The High Window" and the seminal classics "Farewell, My Lovely" and "The Big Sleep"). As usual, his character development and use of dialogue and action are peerless, and of course he is the master of employing characters with disguised or multiple identities. And perhaps most importantly, he knows how to disclose information to the reader at just the right pace to maintain the proper amount of tension -- never stretched so much that all credibility goes out the window nor so little that the story becomes dull.

Chandler's Philip Marlowe is the prototype for all the hard-boiled private eyes who have come down the literary pike after him. Marlowe is never fully dressed unless he has a cigarette dangling from his lip. Always ready with cynical quips, he consumes distilled spirits the way the rest of us take in oxygen. And when it comes to solving a case, Marlowe never bends the rules. No, he ignores the rules completely.
The Lady in the Lake starts off with Marlowe being hired by a business executive, who wants to locate his missing wife. She's described as being quite a handful. Young, blond and two times a maniac.....klepto and nympho. Within about two days, Marlowe runs across two dead bodies and finds that a death ruled a suicide 18 months before is really a covered up murder. The plot contains many unexpected twists and turns that serve to keep the reader interested and very curious about what is going to happen next. If I have any criticism of this book at all, its that a couple of the many plot devices seem a bit contrived.
In describing people, places and things, Chandler does not spare the adjectives. His remarkable prose provides very vivid images of what is happening and thereby allows the reader to be transported right into the narrative.
So, do yourself a favor and read The Lady in the Lake. You'll find out why Raymond Chandler's stellar reputation is so richly deserved.

A 2007 summer reading list mini review.

I recently read a book celebrating the 100th birthday of Raymond Chandler. In the book, many current detective writers tell Phillip Marlowe stories and then explain the effect that Marlowe and Chandler had on their careers. The praise was glowing, and I picked up Lady in the Lake, to see if it was warranted. After the first chapter, I had an inkling the praise was justified. After the second, I knew.

The story of a Marlowe trailing an executives missing wife is excellent, but it is Chandler's use of language in dialogue that is amazing. The following exchange happens late in the book when a desk clerk uses the word whom and the crusty cop with Chandler is taken aback:

Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. 'Did he say, "whom"?'
'Yeah, but don't hit him' I said. There is such a word.'
Degarmo licked his lips. ' I knew there was,' he said ' I often wondered where they kept it. ...'

The wise cracking atmosphere through the maze of dead bodies and corrupt officials is why I like Marlowe so much. And while there have been so many imitators through the years, I am amazed how fresh and innovative Chandler seems in comparison. Chandler and Marlowe are definitely worthy of all the acclaim.

Chandler is notorious for beautiful prose and muddled plots, but most of the blame can be attributed to his first novel from 1939: The Big Sleep. Not every Chandler plot is confusing. Here we have Chandler at his prime with his fourth novel from 1943 and it has both a nice plot and all the famous prose. If you read some other comments about the plot COVER YOUR EYES!!! Part of the fun of the present book is the good plot. The less you know the better, until you finish, and I will not spill the beans on the beautiful plot.

If you are new to Chandler, start with this novel or his second novel Farewell, My Lovely or perhaps the collection of four short stories from the 1930s: Trouble Is My Business. I bought all seven novels and two books of short stories - The Simple Art of Murder is his other collection of short stories - and consider the nine books to be mini-treasures. Of course, his first novel The Big Sleep is his most famous novel, made famous by the Warner's movie starring Bogart and Bacall, but the plot leaves one's head spinning.

When Chandler was starting out as a writer, he had little money and was forced to live in very cheap housing in Santa Monica. There he saw the rampant police and city corruption in action where the powerful and the wealthy controlled the city. This was at odds with the citizen's perception that the city was law abiding, proper, and conservative. He uses that experience here as a partial theme of the novel, but he calls the town his fictional name of Bay City instead of Santa Monica. It is an extension of his earlier short story writing and his second novel Farewell, My Lovely. Detective Marlowe has his office in west LA - that is in Hollywood - and he seems to drift back and forth between LA and Bay City in many Chandler novels and short stories.

Now that he is famous as a writer, and moved out of Santa Monica in late 1940, he seems to pull out all the stops and hits Bay City police broadside with this present 1943 novel that involves some out of control police. This Chandler novel contains many of the elements of his famous "film noir" period, noir being the reference to police and civic corruption, a lawlessness in Los Angeles based detective stories that often reflected real news crime stories. As I mentioned briefly, the plot involves Santa Monica, i.e.: Bay City, but also it moves off into the countryside near where Chandler himself lived briefly in 1940, and there are a few chapters set in the mountains, but that is just part of the novel.

Like Chandler's other novels, it is one of the most beautifully written books ever published. The lines just flow and carry the reader along, seemingly effortlessly. The writing reminds me of some of Jack London's novels (1900) such as the Call of the Wild for the smoothness of the prose, but surprisingly Chandler might even be better and more refined. His technique was to pull old stories apart, then change them, then re-write them as short stories, and then take that work and extend it , modify it again a second or third time or even more, and finally put together complete novels. There is a high level of refinement and style that he was able to develop as a result of this writing process. This technique is not new. Shakespeare himself used this technique in virtually every play, taking old myths, stories, and historical accounts such as King Lear. He would break them apart, change them, and make new works with new twists, turns, and characters; his last play The Tempest is his thought to be his only completely original play. Chandler was aware of this parallel and would joke that if Shakespeare were alive he would be living in Hollywood working for the studios.

5 star classic stuff.

I decided to give a classic detective series a try. Philip Marlowe was a hard boiled detective created by Raymond Chandler. Raymond Chandler is considered a major force is the development of private detective stories. Most of his novels were turned into movies.

In The Lady in the Lady Philip is approached by a husband who is concerned about the disappearance of his wife. His wife has a shady side, which would hurt the man's business reputation, so he doesn't want to involve the police.

Philip Marlowe then takes a roller coaster ride through murder, intrigue, threats, crooked police and so on. There were a couple twists along the way, but they were honest twists, the author didn't pull a rabbit out of the hat.

The story is a page turner. I stayed up until 12:30 to finish it.

If you enjoyed classic mysteries, then I think you'll enjoy The Lady in the Lake.