The High Window is a 1942 detective novel by Raymond Chandler and featuring Philip Marlowe.
Marlowe is hired by Mrs Elizabeth Bright Murdock, the widow of a wealthy philanthropist and coin collector. The Brasher Doubloon, an 18th-century coin that is the pride of the Murdock collection, has gone missing; Mrs Murdock suspects that one of her dysfunctional family has stolen it, and wants it retrieved without publicity.
Marlowe's luck being what it is, it's not long before dead bodies start turning up. And then the Brasher Doubloon turns up as well — in two different places at once...
This novel contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Leslie Murdock claims that this is what happened with Vannier and his gun went off by accident. Marlowe is skeptical but can't completely dismiss the possibility that it is how it went down. It's part of why he let's Leslie go.
- Awful Wedded Life: Linda Conquest and Leslie Murdock have one of these due to the oppressive influence of Elizabeth Murdock, Linda's mother-in-law. It's the point that Linda has decided to divorce him and go back to being a lounge singer.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Bright-Murdock family is full of messy emotional undercurrents, love-hate relationships, and at least one carefully hushed-up murder.
- Blackmail Backfire: One of the people who winds up dead is a blackmailer who, Marlowe eventually determines, was killed during a confrontation with one of his victims.
- Continuity Nod: When Marlowe has to provide references he mentions Lieutenant Randall, the homicide cop he worked with in Farewell, My Lovely.
- Counterfeit Cash: In a variation, the mastermind behind the theft of the Brasher Doubloon turns out to be a criminal who's figured out a way to make nearly-indistinguishable copies of it, with the intention of selling it under the table several times over. It's part counterfeiting, part art forgery, as the Doubloon is far more valuable on the rare coin market than as legal currency.
- Evil Matriarch: Mrs Murdock is controlling and manipulative, and not only to her blood relatives: she also has a weird quasi-maternal relationship to her secretary that gets worse the more Marlowe learns about it.
- Fakin' MacGuffin: Done by the villains; partway through the novel, the Brasher Doubloon is returned to Mrs Murdock in the hope that she'll call Marlowe off, but after Marlowe figures out the counterfeiting angle he realizes that they've given her one of the counterfeits and kept the original. He never actually gets around to telling Mrs Murdock this, deciding that enlightening her would be more trouble than it's worth, particularly since it was never really the Doubloon itself that mattered to her to begin with.
- Going by the Matchbook: Played with. One of the people who tries leaning on Marlowe lights his cigarettes with matches from a branded matchbook, and Marlowe makes a mental note of the name: "Maybe it was a clue." It never becomes relevant.
- Grail in the Garbage: Marlowe exploits this. He receives the Brasher Doubloon in the mail (actually the first counterfeit, though he doesn't realize it until later) and decides it's too hot to hang onto himself. So for safekeeping, he sells it to a pawnshop, and simply buys it back when he needs it a few days later. The pawnbroker, apparently unaware of the Doubloon's true value, only offers Marlowe $15 for it.
- The Ingenue: Merle Davis, Mrs Murdock's secretary.
- Karma Houdini: Mrs. Murdock almost certainly murdered her husband and her son, Leslie Murdock, killed Vannier but neither of them faces any consequences for their actions.
- Let Off by the Detective: Philip Marlowe once more demonstrates this quality by refusing to turn over any information about the Murdochs despite the fact that Leslie and his mother are both murderers.
- MacGuffin: The plot has Marlowe tracking down the Brasher Doubloon, a legendary coin worth a fortune that leaves a trail of dead thieves behind it; come the ending, it turns out a minor character sold it for a new start with a clean slate, but it's unimportant considering Marlowe uncovers a framing and a few murders in the process.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: At various points, when characters break into bad language, a vague description is given instead of a precise reporting of the words used. For instance, during a conversation with a lift operator, the man says that the work suits him so well that he doesn't mind how low the pay is, and Marlowe jokes that he shouldn't let the union hear him say so."You know what the union can do?" I shook my head. He told me.
- Stepping Out for a Quick Cup of Coffee: After winning the good graces of an employee at the office building where a suspect's office is located, Marlowe asks him if it would be worth asking the building supervisor to open up the office and let him look around. The employee says that knowing the super that would be a bad idea, then silently draws Marlowe's attention to a pass-key hanging on his wall before announcing that it's time for his toilet break and removing himself from the scene. Marlowe takes the hint and borrows the pass-key.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: The villains hit on a way of using dental equipment to make perfect duplicates of coins—a process that's useless for traditional counterfeiting because it costs more than the coins themselves are worth. But one of the counterfeiters realizes they could turn a profit by duplicating rare coins rather than legal currency... rare coins like the Brasher Doubloon.
