
I'm really enjoying Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe series and have just finished reading the fourth book in the series, Lady In The Lake (1943). Marlowe as usual attracts dead bodies that complicate the missing person case he has been hired for. The first body is "the lady in the lake" of the title and the wife of the alcoholic caretaker-seemingly the result of domestic violence-but things are never so simple in a Chandler novel. The story has the usual femme fatales, crooked cops, and eccentric LA types as well as some yokels since the body is found at in lake in the mountains where some vacation cottages have been built. There's an underrated county sheriff that shines in this novel and makes one wonder if it was inspiration for the female sheriff in the Coen brother's Fargo. It does feel as though this novel had one of the more straight ahead plots thus far as well. As usual some great writing and dialogue throughout:
“I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.”
“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get...”
“However hard I try to be nice I always end up with my nose in the dirt and my thumb feeling for somebody’s eye.”
It was another entertaining and stylish thriller from a master of the genre. looking forward to the next book in the series.
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