The Gillerlain Company’s reception room looked even emptier than the day before. The same fluffy little blonde was tucked in behind the PBX in the corner. She gave me a quick smile and I gave her the gunman’s salute, a stiff forefinger pointing at her, the three lower fingers tucked back under it, and the thumb wiggling up and down like a western gun fighter fanning his hammer. She laughed heartily, without making a sound. This was more fun than she had had in a week.

I think most mystery fans wish Raymond Chandler had written more Philip Marlowe books. He burned hot, like the alcohol that consumed him, but pretty briefly as an artist. The Lady in the Lake is considered neither his best nor his worst novel. It also suffers from the movie they made out of it, starring and directed by Robert Montgomery (Elizabeth’s father). Montgomery chose to go all artsy with it, shooting the whole thing from Marlowe’s point of view, so that we only saw his face occasionally in a mirror. It’s awkward, and it doesn’t work very well. The novel deserves better than that.

Marlowe is hired by a businessman who wants him to find his wife, who has disappeared. She apparently went to their mountain lake cabin, and then traveled with a lover to Mexico, then back to Los Angeles. Then nothing. He knows she doesn’t want to be married to him anymore, but he’s concerned about her anyway.

Marlowe travels up to the mountain cabin, where he happens to witness the recovery of the body of another woman, the wife of a local, who drowned in the lake. Then the missing woman’s lover is murdered. And Marlowe realizes somebody has been lying to him.

The Lady in the Lake’s plot is a little complex (though not as confusing as some of Chandler’s other scenarios), and I thought it ended somewhat abruptly. But the prose is classic Chandler:

This is the ultimate end of the fog belt, and the beginning of that semi-desert region where the sun is as light and dry as old sherry in the morning, as hot as a blast furnace at noon, and drops like an angry brick at nightfall.

The book also features one of my favorite Marlowe side characters, the laconic Constable Jim Patton.

The Lady in the Lake is not the best Chandler, but definitely entertaining.