100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Fast overnight NZ delivery 🚀 Don't forget Father's Day is this Sunday 📅

The High Window: Popular Penguins

By Raymond Chandler
Penguin Classics
0.0 (0 reviews)
4.04 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating. ( 24,901 ratings, 1,377 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The High Window by Raymond Chandler is a gripping crime and thriller story featuring the iconic private investigator, Philip Marlowe. Hired to find a missing rare coin, Marlowe delves into a world filled with deceit, murder, and intrigue. As he unravels the tangled web of lies, he encounters a cast of memorable characters, uncovering deeper mysteries along the way.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$1599
OVERNIGHT NZ-WIDE DELIVERY

Found a better price? Request a price match

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you enjoy classic noir crime novels filled with intricate plots, sharp dialogue, and gritty atmospheres. Raymond Chandler's creation offers a gripping mystery that keeps you turning the pages as the protagonist, a private investigator, navigates a complex web of deceit and danger. Fans of hard-boiled detective stories will likely appreciate the suspense and character depth present in this tale.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Philip Marlowe's 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. Unfortunately, each time the Doubloon pops up, so does a murder. 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.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The High Window by Raymond Chandler introduces us to Philip Marlowe, a private investigator entangled in a seemingly straightforward case. His client, a dried-up husk of a woman, has tasked him with retrieving a rare gold coin, the Brasher Doubloon, that has disappeared from her late husband's collection. It sounds simple enough. Maybe too simple.

However, with every reappearance of the Doubloon, a murder seems to follow. For a private investigator, this is problematic because a string of corpses across Los Angeles is sure to attract law enforcement's attention. If Marlowe doesn't crack the case swiftly, he faces the prospect of ending up in jail—or worse, in a box in the ground.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

The High Window: Popular Penguins by Raymond Chandler is often praised for its atmospheric writing and incisive character development, typical of Chandler's hardboiled style. Critics appreciate the novel's intricate plot and Philip Marlowe’s sharp dialogue, though some mention it might be slightly less polished compared to his other works. The depiction of 1940s Los Angeles adds authenticity, making it a compelling read for fans of noir crime fiction.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780143566489

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 29 August 2011

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Classics

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 18.0mm

Width: 111.0mm

Height: 180.0mm

Weight: 162g

Pages: 164

Collections

Best Sellers at Book Hero Crime & Thriller Fiction General Fiction In Stock Books In-Stock Fiction Books New Release Fiction Penguin Books Penguin Classics Penguin Classics: Crime & Thriller Popular Penguins Raymond Chandler

About the Author

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and moved to England with his family when he was twelve. He attended Dulwich College, Alma Mater to some of the twentieth century's most renowned writers. Returning to America in 1912, he settled in California, worked in a number of jobs, and later married. It was during the Depression era that he seriously turned his hand to writing and his first published story appeared in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1933, followed six years later by his first novel. The Big Sleep introduced the world to Philip Marlowe, the often imitated but never-bettered hard-boiled private investigator.

Also by Raymond Chandler

View all
  • The Big Sleep and Other Novels
    Raymond Chandler created the fast-talking, trouble-seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family—and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures—is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The detective's iconic image burns just as brightly in Farewell My...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2900
    Elsewhere:
    $3200
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Farewell My Lovely: Popular Penguins
    Eight years ago, Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married—until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up, and he wants Velma back. PI Philip Marlowe meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help him. Dragged from one smoky bar to another, Marlowe’s...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $1599
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Lady in the Lake: Popular Penguins
    A woman has been reported missing to detective Marlowe and a corpse is found in the lake. Yet it is not the body of the missing person, but that of one of her neighbours. Now Marlowe's on the trail of a killer, who leads him out of smoggy LA all the way to a murky mountain lake... The Lady in...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $1699
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The High Window
    The classic Chandler mystery, reissued now in B format. The High Window features Philip Marlowe on a case. 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. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely
    Two great novels featuring hard-boiled Californian detective Philip Marlowe. Raymond Chandler created the fast-talking, trouble-seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family—alongside an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures—forms the backdrop to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The hard-boiled...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2800
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Farewell, My Lovely
    July 2005 sees a major relaunch of Chandler's Philip Marlowe series to coincide with Harrogate Crime Festival. Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married - until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up, and he wants Velma back. P.I. Philip Marlowe meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Long Good-bye
    July 2005 sees a major relaunch of Chandler's Philip Marlowe series to tie in with Harrogate Crime Festival. Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem – his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world – Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Big Sleep
    A beautiful repackage of Chandler's most famous and popular novel of all - part of the Chandler reissue series. Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Playback
    The classic Chandler mystery - reissued now in B format. Stalking the tawdry neon wilderness of forties and fifties Los Angeles, Raymond Chandler's hard-drinking, wise-cracking Phillip Marlowe is one of the world's most famous fictional detectives. Playback finds Marlowe mixing business with pleasure - getting paid to follow a mysterious and lovely red-head named Eleanor King. And wherever Miss King...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Big Sleep
    The Big Sleep is hard-boiled detective fiction at its best - Raymond Chandler's best-loved novel, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.' Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Lady in the Lake
    The classic Chandler mystery, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a quickie divorce and marry a Casanova-wannabe named Chris Lavery. Or so the note she left her husband insisted. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it, he denies everything and sends the private investigator packing with...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Little Sister
    July 2005 sees a major relaunch of Chandler's Philip Marlowe series to tie in with Harrogate Crime Festival. Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or leastways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable...
    By Raymond Chandler
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks

More from Crime & Thriller

View all
  • New Release
    Dying Days
    Award-winning writer delivers a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Missing soldiers, MI6 secrets and European partisans collide in a deadly game where the lines between lies and reality are fast disintegrating. In the dying days of the Second World War, a new conflict is about to ignite. May, 1945: After fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis, Tito's Yugoslav Army and Allied...
    By Anthony Byrt
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Country Road Murders
    Buy to Win
    New Release
    The Country Road Murders
    From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a pulse-pounding thriller about justice, vengeance and the roads that lead us home. No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent - which is what Jim has, in spades — LEE CHILD Cross Rivers is the kind of small town where everyone knows your name – and your secrets. Silas Tucker...
    By James Patterson
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    Every Lake
    Scary stories are fun... until your life becomes one. When Alice was fifteen, her father killed Mia Heywood in their lakefront cottage before vanishing into the trees. At least that's what the locals think happened. Over a decade later, Alice has lost her job as a journalist, she's going through an expensive divorce and she desperately needs to sell the...
    By Adam Perry
    Paperback
    $3299
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Nautilus
    New Release
    Nautilus
    The follow-up to the bestselling novel The Turing Protocol. Nautilus is a machine with the astonishing power to send messages eight weeks back in time. Its users must follow a set of protocols established by its inventor, Alan Turing, including that it can only be used by a descendant of his family, and only to avert global disasters. But what...
    By Nick Croydon
    Paperback
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Cold River
    New Release
    Cold River
    The sensational new novel from the author of the bestselling thriller, The Creeper, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2025. Deep in the mountains, secrets grow deadly... Detective Constable Sally White knows how easily hikers can go missing in Victoria's high country. But there's something about the disappearance of Louis Taylor, a young man lost up...
    By Margaret Hickey
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Buy to Win
    New Release
    It Could Have Been Her
    PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1 Sunday Times and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...
    By Lisa Jewell
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Buy to Win
    26 Beauties
    The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...
    By James Patterson
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    Lizzy's Pick Lizzy's Pick
    The Secrets We Hide
    The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author of We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...
    By Karin Slaughter
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Buy to Win
    The Parkwood Murders
    They came for an escape, but can they escape a killer? Detective Nicola Bridge returns in another gripping and immersive mystery For its loyal guests, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven- woodland walks, a tranquil lake, service around the clock. Until, just after midsummer, a body is found floating in the swimming pool. Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted...
    By Chris Chibnall
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    Backorder
    Ships mid September
  • On Sale
    13% off
    Hope Rises
    'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....
    By David Baldacci
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Slash
    A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...
    By Gavin Strawhan
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A River Red With Blood
    The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...
    By John Connolly
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships today

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.

Crime & Thriller lists from the team

Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!

The Latest at Book Hero

View all