The Lady in the Lake
Raymond Chandler
(Mystery novel; Philip Marlowe series)
This is less a review of this specific novel than an attempt to recapture the feelings I had upon first encountering Raymond Chandler. Some years ago I bought an anthology of mystery tales called 3X3, which contained three entire novels as well as numerous short stories. On the verge of dumping it again, I happened to open it to the first page of one of the novels, The Lady in the Lake.
I read the first paragraph, about the sidewalk made of rubber blocks. For some reason this made me read the first page. Then I read the first chapter, and the idea of dumping the book vanished.
I know I'm coming pretty late in the game to Chandler, his poetry in prose and the contrasting dark, sleezy world of Philip Marlowe, but I didn't read many mysteries in my youth. More's the pity. Marlowe's world, Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s, is a palpable reality in Chandler's novels. You can see every lash on a gorgeous woman's eyelid, smell the sweat and cigarette butts in the police station, feel a muscular goon's knuckles smack your chin. It is a land corrupt and decaying, yet beautiful and alive, full of the good, the bad, the tired, and the sad.
I've heard that reading Chandler means you're something of a snob, in that Chandler detested most detective fiction and consciously tried to improve on it. I don't know how to answer that but to say I was pretty much a blank slate in the mystery field; few of the mysteries I did read held my attention. But The Lady of the Lake reached right out of the book, grabbed me by the lapels, and pulled me in with a splash. Read it, read more Marlowe, read the short story prototypes Chandler wrote before he came up with his archetypal detective. *****
The Kinsey Millhone Series: A Is for Alibi through K Is for Killer
Susan A. Grafton
(Mystery novels)
I have probably never read a series as fast as I've been reading the Kinsey Millhone mysteries of Sue Grafton. About two years ago, in the depths of the worst depression I ever felt, the "alphabet" mysteries were literally the only things I could bring myself to read, not because they were easy or light but because they were so engaging. A true disciple of the Raymond Chandler school of writing, Sue Grafton's eye for detail is thorough without dragging on too long -- a detective's eye view, Kinsey taking in everything around her. However, though a case can become dark and grim, even deadly, Kinsey is a definite spirit of life, bouncing back in the next volume to solve another case.
The small city of Santa Teresa, California, comes to life through Kinsey's POV, the grittier, darker side as much as the pretty tourist side. Background characters appear and reappear in each volume, populating Grafton's world, and sometimes staging their own little soap operas: Lieutenant Dolan, who (naturally) hates private eyes but who respects Ms. Millhone; Rosie, the bossy Hungarian restaurant owner who varies Kinsey's diet beyond her usual McDonald's fare; and especially Henry Pitts, the old retired baker who rents Kinsey her tiny apartment, who might really have been the man of her dreams had he been a few -- just a few -- years younger.
I won't even try to rate all the Millhone books individually; the first three were the best in my opinion, yet the letters I'm reaching now ("J" and "K") are climbing in quality and entertainment value to equal the earliest books. Altogether : ****
The Night Land V. 1
William H. Hodgson
(Horror/SF novel)
I ought to read both volumes first, but. . . One of the greatest and strangest fantasies ever produced, with the inhabitants of the last structure on earth, the Great Redoubt, faced with monsters and horrors that roam the land beneath a burnt-out sun. The hero learns of a second Redoubt, where lives a woman he loved in a previous life, and he ventures across the Night Land to find her. Slows a little halfway. If it had been cut in three parts, with a slight pause between each volume, I think there would have been no "slowing". The only bad part is the long first chapter, written as if by a 17th century English dandy (the previous incarnation of the hero). Actually, the archaic language trying to explain SF ideas kind of grows on you. ****½
The Night Land V. 2
William Hope Hodgson
(Horror/SF novel)
And now the second half. (I didn't mention above that this is the Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition I own, printed as two paperbacks.) Night Land's second half has our hero reach the Lesser Redoubt to escort the maid Naani back to the Great Redoubt. Here adventure mixes with the couple's growing romance, which many have found cloying, but unnameable horrors pop up often enough to interrupt the saccarin-sweet bits. Hodgson again drops many give-away ideas in this apocalyptic work, such as Naani's mention of a previous incarnation when entire cities on railway tracks rolled along endless plains (perhaps the inspiration for Christopher Priest's The Inverted World). The Night Land truly is a world/universe unto itself; wading through the whole epic takes a bit of time and effort, an ever-more-unlikely occurrence in these days of instant gratification. Still, I say it's worth it to know this weird, frightening, yet strangely beautiful world created by William H. Hodgson. ****
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