The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler

This is the middle one, though no one knew that at the time. The Lady in the Lake was published in 1943, the end of the first burst of Raymond Chandler's novels and the fourth of an eventual seven about private detective Philip Marlowe. After publishing those four books in five years, it would be six more before The Little Sister appeared in 1949, and four and five more years between his his last two books.

This is also the end of the war-time Chandler - again, only in retrospect. But Lady is a war-time book, with references to rationing and limited supplies and a heavily-guarded dam that is crucial at the very end of the novel.

Marlowe is hired by a businessman, Derace Kinglsey, to find his wife: she ran away, he thinks with the man (Chris Lavery) she's been having an affair with, leaving their mountain cabin on Little Fawn Lake about a month ago and telegraphing from El Paso, apparently on the way to a Mexican divorce. Kingsley would be fine with a divorce, but his wife is a bit wild and has her own money to be wild with - he wants to make sure she's not getting into anything serious while she's still married to him.

So Marlowe heads up into the mountains - one of the stories that Chandler "cannibalized" into Lady in the Lake was "No Crime in the Mountains," a title I always remember fondly - to investigate the disappearance of Crystal Kingsley. He discovers that another woman disappeared the same night: Muriel Chess, wife of the caretaker Bill. More dramatically, he and Bill discover Muriel's body in the lake - she's clearly been in there since the night she "disappeared," and the note she left for Bill might have been a suicide note.

The local police, led by the local sheriff-like constable, Jim Patton, think that note might be older than Chess says it is, and Chess is the obvious first suspect in the death of his wife. Marlowe isn't sure how this death relates to his actual case, but he still hasn't found Crystal Kingsley. He spends the rest of the novel between Los Angeles, where Kingsley lives; Bay City, where Lavery lives; and Little Fawn Lake. 

Bay City is corrupt - we saw that in Farewell, My Lovely and it's still true now - and Marlowe gets into some trouble with a detective there named Degarmo, who is also caught up somehow with a pill-pusher doctor, Almore, who coincidentally (or maybe not) lives right across the street from Lavery in a neighborhood devoid of other houses. There's also another woman, missing for a longer time - Mildred Haviland, Almore's former nurse. And another dead woman, also a longer time ago - Almore's wife, who conveniently committed suicide by car exhaust after a wild night that led Almore to bring her home and put her to sleep with a sedative.

All of that is connected, in the end. Crystal Kingsley is not as central in her own missing-persons case as she seemed to be. And there will be more bodies before it's done, as always.

I tend to clump Chandler's novels: Big Sleep and Long Goodbye are the best, with Goodbye clearly on top. The four in between them, including Lady, are all very strong, and only one small step down. I try to be polite and not mention Playback. On this re-read, I didn't see anything to shake that hierarchy: Lady is still a fine detective story, with an interestingly twisty plot, and doesn't rely too heavily on Marlowe being sapped on the head and left in danger. And Chandler's prose is as evocative and thoughtful and resonant here as his best.

(Note: I read this in the Library of America Later Novels & Other Writings. I don't think there are any textual discrepancies in editions of Chandler, but I'll always recommend LoA for American writers, particularly if you think you'll want to read more than one book.)