Rating: 
Summary: Back when men were men and women were dames.
Review: The setting of 1940's California is great, and that is actually when Chandler wrote this book. It's a classic noir mystery and I couldn't help thinking as I was reading that it should have been played by Bogie as Philip Marlowe and Bacall as the femme fatale in this story. This would make a great movie actually. It's a twist on the classic missing female story. Marlowe has been hired by a big wig to find his wife. She's been missing for a month. As Marlowe tries to follow her tracks he gets pitted against some pretty desperate men, and he manages to get knocked on the head at least a couple of times before he figures out what happened to the woman he is hired to find. Chandler's characterizations are great. Marlowe is wonderful, but there are some really good bit players in this one too - for example Patton- the Sheriff from San Bernadino is actually quite wonderful. A good old boy that happens to be as sharp as a tack and a crack shot too. Good stuff.
Rating:
Summary: A thriller til the end!!!
Review: This book had me sitting on the edge of my seat. The first person point of view made me feel a part of the mystery. The plot of the story was twisty, therefore I could not determine who the murderer was. If you start you get hooked and want to know what the detective knows. You can't trust the obvious because when you do it only commplicates things.
Rating:
Summary: A novel that makes you wonder what will happen next.
Review: This novel was well written and it keeps you wondering what will happen next. Its full of murders, suspense, and mistaken identities. This is one book that should be read by all. Keeping with the tough guy image of the Film Noire genre with the example of Lieutenant Degarmo the first time he meets Detective Marlowe "If I have to get tough, fellow, you'll know it". I recomend this easy to read and enjoyable book fully and give it 4 stars.
Rating:
Summary: A novel that keeps you wondering.
Review: This well written novel is a true axample of Raymond Chandler's abilities. It is a suspensful book with a great deal of mystery, it keeps you on your toes and on the edge of your seat. This book stays with the classic tough guy image found so often in Film Noire stories. "If I have to get tough with you, fellow, you'll know it." Lieutenant Degarmo to Detective Marlowe chapter 4, page 30, from The Lady in the Lake. I recomend this novel and give it four stars.
Rating:
Summary: Once again, Chandler wins my admiration.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Once again, Chandler wins my admiration.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Once again, Chandler wins my admiration.
Review: 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.
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