The Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler, was written in 1943. The
novel begins with Marlowe meeting Derace Kingsley at the offices of The Gillerlain Company. The offices of the perfume company are as imposing as the six foot-two, Kingsley himself. Typical of a Chandler novel, the plot moves speedily. Kingsley’s
wife has gone missing and it is Marlowe’s task to find her. She left a note stating that she was on her way to Mexico with her
lover; the only problem being that her lover is still in the USA and knows nothing about this plan. Mrs Kingsley
likes to drink, she likes men and she likes to shoplift. Kingsley doesn’t want her back; but he does want to know where she is and that she is safe - more to the point, he is determined to avoid any
scandal.
Marlowe’s first port of call is Kingsley’s mountain retreat where he learns from Bill Chess, the caretaker, that his wife, Muriel left him the same day that he slept with Kingsley’s wife and that he hadn’t seen either of them since. He and Marlowe soon do see Muriel, however, when, gazing down into the lake, they see her body in the water below.
Kingsley’s hiring of Marlowe to protect him from scandal takes a further dent when his wife’s lover is found shot dead; his bloodied corpse in the bathroom; his wife’s clothes in the bedroom. The novel grows ever more intense as the clues stack up and an ever more complex interweaving of character and action absorbs the reader and takes us ever deeper into a
world of casual sex, drugs, police corruption and violence
This is a novel which crackles with the poetry, sharpness and wit of Raymond Chandler. Philip Marlowe is the only fictional detective who can rival Sherlock Holmes in terms of fame. It is Marlowe, however, who is the more believable of the two and this holds true for all of Chandler’s characters. Like Dickens, he is a master at using a few words of dialogue to bring those involved in his plots off the page and imprint them in the readers’
mind; whether it be his world-weary hero, the pseudo-tough business magnate or the country policeman whose girth and laid back attitude hides a sharp mind and a sharper trigger finger.