CarlAlves

The Lady in the Lake is a hardboiled mystery novel written and set in the forties. Private detective Phillip Marlowe has been hired by a wealthy client, whose wife has gone missing. He fears she may have gotten into trouble after sending him a wire that she was marrying another guy. His investigation finds a second woman missing, also someone’s wife. As he digs further, he finds a complicated web of entanglements.

This is the first novel I’ve read from Raymond Chandler, and I didn’t much care for it. The problem I had with the novel is that I found it to be very confusing. There was a constant infusion of characters that were mostly taking place off screen, and at some point I got lost in all of the characters and details. After that happened, I couldn’t quite get back into it. I found the writing to be competent and solid, and the character of Phillip Marlowe to be an interesting one, but the actual plot didn’t meet my expectations.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street