The High Window

Philip Marlowe is hired by an imperious widow to find a rare gold coin missing from her late husband's collection, and immediately suspects the job will not be as simple as the client presents it. The Brasher Doubloon reappears with bodies attached, and the investigation leads Marlowe into the familiar Los Angeles territories of blackmail, inherited wealth, and the secrets people pay extraordinary prices to protect. Chandler's third Marlowe novel is among his most architecturally satisfying.

Scott Brick brings Chandler's prose its proper quality of tough lyricism, hitting the wise-cracking similes with the dry precision they require and conveying Marlowe's fundamental decency through the hard surface. His performance understands that Marlowe is most interesting when he is tired and cynical and doing the right thing anyway, and Brick communicates that quality without sentimentalizing it. The period atmosphere, Chandler's Los Angeles of money and menace, is fully present.