The Lady in the Lake

It's often said Chandler could not plot, but The Lady in the Lake gives the lie to that tale. The Lady in the Lake has the complexity of an Agatha Christie or Freeman Wills Crofts and for once Chandler manages to fully (well, almost) make sense of it all at the end. Here the plot revelations keep one turning pages, along with the writing. Characters are vivid as ever, and more plausibly presented than in The Big Sleep. Not as moving a story as Farewell, My Lovely, but beautifully plotted, The Lady in the Lake is a pinnacle of genuine detective fiction.

One of the fun things about Chandler can be familiarity with the LA area in which his tales take place. This time, Philip Marlowe goes sleuthing in the San Bernadino Mountains in a town that, in the real world, is named Big Bear Lake. Such surroundings allow the entrance of a different sort of character - the rustic lawman. It's a nice counterpoint to the city savvy Marlowe and distinguishes this novel from Chandler's others.

Reading Chandler's Marlowe novels in quick succession may not the optimum way to enjoy them. While they remain suspenseful and entertaining, the genre requires a set formula that cannot vary overmuch from murder, blackmail and mistaken indentity. The only variance being who, where, and for what purpose. I suspect the intervals between original publication were the pause Chandler's contemporary readership needed.

Nevertheless, The Lady in the Lake remains highly readable. At the climactic moment when Marlowe unravels the mystery, I found I couldn't put the book down despite needing to be elsewhere. Thus, Chandler's skill as a wordsmith compensates for any formulaic repetition. I found The Lady in the Lake second only to Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely in compelling, 40's-era detective fiction. It is another 5-star reading experience.

During the Second World War's 'lights-out' period, Raymond Chandler wrote two Philip Marlowe novels in quick succession. The overall results were mixed: 'The High Window' (1942) was judged by Chandler as his absolute worst novel and still lacks the popularity of his others. 'The Lady in the Lake' (1943), while a best-seller, has an unusual approach that seems rushed and not entirely convincing. Chandler, as it turned out, would not publish another Marlowe novel for six years (until 'The Little Sister' in 1949), choosing to deal with other projects that included a film version of 'The Big Sleep' starring Humphrey Bogart.

In 'The Lady in the Lake,' Chandler's fourth Marlowe novel, Philip is hired by a Los Angeles cosmetics executive, Derace Kingsley, to track down his wife, Crystal, who may have fled to Mexico with her extramarital lover. Marlowe is directed to the Kingsleys' vacation home on Little Fawn Lake in the rural California hills and faces a secondary murder case when he discovers an unidentifiable woman's body. Chandler again uses circular plotting, with Marlowe going through a nutty investigation before finding himself almost exactly where he began.

'The Lady in the Lake' is a rather odd detective story, in that Chandler tries to focus entirely upon character. The book is steeped in dialogue; there is very little action, with Marlowe drawing his gun just once and never firing it. Chandler is at his stylistic best in the rural scenes, where he uses quiet, empty landscapes to build tension. Most impressive are his descriptions of the settings and use of animals such as birds and squirrels to color the situation at hand. Chandler pulls off genuinely eerie moments whose solitude carries an omen, sometimes in broad daylight.

Unfortunately, 'The Lady in the Lake' wastes an opportunity to take Marlowe in new directions. Not enough time, for example, is spent at Little Fawn Lake; far too much of the novel reverts to inner-city houses and buildings, locations that are usual for Marlowe. Chandler fares brilliantly in the rural scenes, but we don't seem to hang around them for very long. Marlowe's investigation at Little Fawn Lake spans about fifty pages before we find ourselves back in a seedy hotel room.

For a novel that emphasizes character, Chandler only scrapes the psychology that 'The Lady in the Lake' wants so badly to focus upon. Most of the characters are standard noir types of only modest depth: the dandy businessman, the sly secretary, the rogue lover, the uncouth policeman. Chandler also seems distracted by America's growing involvement in the Second World War, with its population living in a kind of 'safe haven,' oblivious to the battles raging across Europe and Asia (save for Pearl Harbor). There are moments when Chandler reveals his irritation towards the U.S. military's growing presence and America's wartime economy. Coupled with the other rough edges, it sometimes feels as if Chandler just wants to get things over with.

And to top off this disappointment, Chandler's ending in which he reveals the murderer feels hacked out of a novel by Agatha Christie, one of the authors whom Chandler was known to dislike. Marlowe finds himself back in the Kingsley cabin at Little Fawn Lake and narrows down the suspects one by one, in typical whodunit fashion. The outcome isn't that much of a surprise and on the novel's last page, Chandler throws in a bungled message about the coming war. This ending feels tacked-on, as if Chandler wasn't entirely sure (or concerned) of how to end it.

Despite its strong points, 'The Lady in the Lake' is no match for such novels as 'Farewell, My Lovely' and 'The Long Goodbye.' The plot is very much a hit-and-miss affair, sometimes with effective twists and sometimes contrived. The Lady in the Lake's storyline just doesn't crackle the way it should. Dialogue is generally up to par for Chandler, but there are moments when the speech is too formal or stilted. The novel may have needed a rewrite, which never happened; after sixty years, 'The Lady in the Lake' is a serviceable novel that fails to deliver in the clutch.

Chandler will always be a superior crime novelist to most of his rivals. 'The Lady in the Lake' boasts a high level of craft and is worth sitting down for, but there are other Marlowe tales that could be read first. For curious readers and Marlowe completists, 'The Lady in the Lake' is available in a recent edition from Black Lizard, the crime label of Vintage Books. Black Lizard has released all of Chandler's Marlowe novels in art deco format with attractive cover art. 'The Lady in the Lake' is 266 pages long and retails at $13.95.

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.

This book is a pretty quality read. I liked it a lot better than Dashiell Hammett's stories. I think Raymond Chandler is the best writer that I've read in this genre. The book is often, funny, inventive and keeps you guessing.