The High Window
Author: Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888-1959) signed contract laid in
Year: 1942
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Place: New York
Description:
[8]+240+[1, blank]+[1, imprint] pages. Small octavo (7 3/4" x 5 1/4") bound in original publisher's light brown cloth stamped in purple in original pictorial jacket. with a contract between CBS Television and Raymond Chandler signed laid in. (Bruccoli A3.1.a. From the Gary Munson Collection) First edition.
Contract between CBS Television and Raymond Chandler, regarding "an adaptation and dramatization" of the work entitled "THE KING IN YELLOW." Signed at the conclusion in ink by Chandler, who also adds his initials to two corrections on the first page. Two pages, 8.5 x 11, July 10, 1953.
It is his third novel featuring the Los Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe. Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the ’40s and ’50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily. In The High Window, Marlowe starts out on the trail of a single stolen coin and ends up knee-deep in bodies. His client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband’s collection. That’s the simple part. But Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. If Marlowe doesn’t wrap this one up fast, he’s going to end up in jail - or worse, in a box in the ground.
Condition:
Moderate edgewear, corners bumped and rubbed, some scuffing to boards, spine slightly sunned, head and tail pushed with light fraying. Binding somewhat cocked, text block edges toned, off-setting to endpapers, bookseller notation to front free end leaf recto, intermittent thumbing to fore-edge margin, penciled date to copyright page. Otherwise, internally clean and bright. Dust jacket unclipped, priced "$2.00 net" to inner front flap, some soiling, spine heavily sunned, chipping and tearing along edges, wear along spine folds with large split along rear fold, loss to head and tail affecting text, verso heavily toned. else very good in a good jacket.
