Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Lunchtime read: The High Window

How about this for a great description of a woman Marlowe is about to go an interview, or at least attempt to:

"A long-limbed languorous type of showgirl blonde lay at her ease in one of the chairs, with her feet raised on a padded rest and a tall misted glass at her elbow, near a silver ice bucket and a Scotch bottle. She looked at us lazily as we came over the grass. From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.”


Fantastic stuff.

Highlights from chapters four, five and six

* The leads Marlowe has to chase are being actively pursued with him setting up a meeting with the coin expert who tried to buy the coin but before that he sets off to try and catch up with the old flatmate Lois Magic of the woman he is trying to track down

* She refuses to see him and then when he manages to get to her refuses to help him out instead lying to him before her boyfriend threatens to shoot Marlowe

* Throughout all of the time since he took the job for Mrs Murdock Marlow has been tailed and he finally gets the man in a hotel and talks to him and it turns out that his tail is also a private investigator but working for the wife Marlowe is searching for

* They agree to meet that evening and Marlowe leaves his tail behind for now but there is a sense there is a lot more going on than meets the eye

More tomorrow…