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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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Book Review: The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
Summary:
Jacob Marlowe finds out he’s the last werewolf living and has just been informed by the WOCOP that they plan to kill him during the next full moon. That’s just fine with him. He’s been living for almost 200 years and is just plain tired of it. So he plans to let the WOCOP’s tails follow him and just let the death happen. The fates don’t quite see it that way, though, and nothing quite goes according to Jake’s plans.
Review:
Think of this as what would have happened if Anne Rice chose to write about werewolves instead of vampires. The Last Werewolf reads very much like Interview with a Vampire only with the characteristics of werewolves instead of vampires of course. By this I mean that the sentences and story structure are incredibly literary while addressing the highly genre topic of werewolves.
Unlike vampires, werewolves must eat a human during each full moon or they become ill. Animals are no substitute. They cannot take a bite and leave the victim alive. No, they must completely ravish the victim. This is no weak True Blood style werepanther or werewolf that can simply shift at will and avoid killing people. Jake is affected by The Hunger and must eat and kill to stay alive. The rest of the month when he’s not in wolf form he has to come to terms with his actions. The crux and root of the dilemma at the heart of the story is this:
We’re the worst thing because for us the worst thing is the best thing. And it’s only the best thing for us if it’s the worst thing for someone else. (page 197)
It’s quite the moral conundrum and is addressed eloquently in the story.
There is also of course Jake’s suicidal mentality. He wants to die, but he doesn’t want to be the one to do it. He’s completely over life. Life is boring and pointless. There are absolutely some beautifully depressing passages about the emptiness of life that both perfectly depict depression and remind me a bit of the Romantic period of poetry. Think of Lord Byron. That type of thing. Beautifully suicidal. That may bother some readers. To me, it’s often a part of great literature. This overwhelming sadness and feelings of helplessness. They’re common human emotions and lend a great force to the narrative.
Now, I was sent this for review due to how much I enjoyed American Psycho in January, so I was expecting it to be graphically violent and sexual and have the two mixed-up. It is all of those things but–dare I say it–it wasn’t quite violent enough for me. I was expecting something shocking, due to the American Psycho connection, but I can see a lot of people reading this and not being put-off by the amount of violence. Compared to your average R rated action flick, it’s really not that bad. On the other hand, a lot of people are profoundly disturbed by the violence in American Psycho. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the level of violence in this book, and I think Duncan was probably smart in that, since it will have a wider appeal. What can I say. I was looking forward to something incredibly gross and twisted and instead got a lot of beautiful prose with the occasional murder. It was a happy surprise, absolutely. I just want to make it abundantly clear to potential readers that if you can handle an R rated horror movie, you can definitely handle the violence in this book, so don’t be turned off!
So the prose is beautiful and the topics addressed and discussed are important or at least interesting, so why am I not raving? The ending left me disappointed. It felt rather cliche and expected, and I didn’t like what became the focus in the end. There are so many other ways the ending could have gone that would have been amazing and powerful, but instead I finished this book and basically said, “AGH not this shit again.” *mini-spoiler* It includes pregnancy and babies, and ya’ll know how I feel about that. *end mini-spoiler*
Overall this is a literary take on a genre theme. It is violent and sexual, but not disturbingly so. Recommended to fans of Anne Rice.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review
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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