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Book Review: The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
Summary:
Everyone’s favorite hard-boiled private eye Marlowe is back, and this time he’s been hired to track down a respectable entrepreneur’s wild wife. She sent a telegram weeks ago stating she was going to marry her boy toy, Lavery, but Lavery was spotted in Hollywood and claims to have no idea where Mrs. Kingsley is. The last place she was known to be was at the Kingsleys’ lake-side country cottage, so that small town is where Marlowe starts his investigation.
Review:
I first encountered Chandler in a film noir class I took in undergrad. Ok, so that class was my first encounter with noir too, but it introduced a whole new genre to me to fall in love with. So whenever I stumble upon a Chandler book in a used bookstore, I absolutely must buy it. There’s simply no question. This will probably continue until I have collected them all.
The entries are always narrated by Marlowe, and The Lady in the Lake does not fail to smoothly represent everything there is to love about him. He’s darkly cynical yet possesses a striking wit even in the face of getting a beat-down from the cops (which happens in pretty much every book. Lots of dirty cops in Marlowe’s world). Without Marlowe’s voice and ever-present intelligence, the books would not be what they are. Thankfully, his presence is just as perfect here as in the other Chandler books.
So what about the story? Well, this time the story is not set entirely in LA. A solid half of it is in the countryside. While I enjoyed those scenes, I must admit I did miss the LA grittiness a bit. Although the scene where the grieving husband drags his wife’s corpse out of the lake on his back was every bit as gritty as any city scene.
The mystery made so much sense in the end that I was kicking myself for not figuring it out. I still can’t believe I didn’t figure it out! How Chandler came up with these twists and turns and managed to write them without giving it away is beyond me. I doubt anyone will be disappointed with the mystery. I literally had no idea what was going on into Marlowe explained everything in the classic film noir wrap-up scene.
The femme fatale was a weak point in this entry, however. I think this is why I really liked it but didn’t love it. She just didn’t seem sexy enough. Violent, yes. Brutal, yes. But sexy? Ehhhh. Personally I always perceive the femme fatale as a gorgeous black widow spider, and well this one just failed a bit on the gorgeous glamor aspect. She was still a femme fatale, but perhaps a bit disappointing.
Overall, I truly enjoyed my time in Marlowe’s world with this entry. Marlowe is someone whose presence it is always worth being in, regardless of whether his surroundings are perfect or not. I recommend this to noir fans, highly. Those new to the genre, I recommend start with The Big Sleep.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Harvard Books used book cellar
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Movie Review: Soylent Green (1973)
Summary:
In the then moderately distant future of 2022, the world has turned to being a congested chaos due to overpopulation and global warming. People survive on various colors of food-like paste sold by Soylent, the favorite of which is Soylent Green. When a police man is called in to investigate the murder of an unusually wealthy man, he realizes it all has to do with the Soylent Corporation and makes a sinister discovery.
Review:
Obviously I came at this movie knowing the “spoiler” that Soylent Green is people. What scifi nerd hasn’t heard that quote? Still, even coming in knowing the big secret, I was expecting more from this film. By far the most enjoyable portion takes place in the wealthy man’s condo where we learn women have come to be attached to condo’s as part of the “furniture” and are passed along with the condo from owner to owner. In return for being the lady of the house, they get safety, security, and food. A whole other story could be told with what is essentially a return to the caveman way of doing things. Unfortunately, this gets glossed over for the supposedly more interesting plot line.
The story is told like a 1970s futuristic version of a film noir. We have the detective fighting all odds to get to the nitty gritty truth of the story. Of course, this is the 1970s version of a future dystopia. As such, the wealthy dwellings look straight out of a 1970s porno, and the unfortunate dystopic surroundings of the poor look eerily similar to a hot and sweaty version of communist Russia. It’s an odd dichotomy that doesn’t quite work.
I was waiting for the film to move from setting up the dystopia to slowly building the horror up, but it never happened. Honestly, given the intensely overpopulated surroundings these people live in and severe lack of food, I actually came away thinking that recycling the dead almost seemed logical, and being a vegetarian, that’s quite the leap for me to make! Clearly the film missed its mark somehow. When the policeman rants about the humans being treated as cattle, all I could think was how earlier in the film both he and a friend drooled over a slab of beef. Why should I be horrified that he feels as if he’s being treated like cattle when he would willingly treat cattle exactly the same way? I was left with no sympathy for him, only for the women who get passed along as furniture with the condo’s in this future.
Overall, Soylent Green had the potential to tell an interesting story of a future where women revert back to their old subservient roles as a survival tactic. Instead, it unfortunately veers off toward a storyline I find unsympathetic and that rings as falsely horrifying given the general set-up of the movie. There are far better 1970s horror films out there, as well as better dystopias.
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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