Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
CHANDLER, Raymond. The High Window. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1942.
Price: US$750.00 + shipping
Description: Small 8vo. Tan cloth with brown lettering. 240pp. Very good. Faint binding edgewear, else tight and internally quite nice. Lacks jacket, else a tight and decent first edition of the third novel featuring Chandler's L.A. detective Philip Marlowe -- and bearing two choice, relevant autograph additions: Tipped to front pastedown are signatures of the two leading men who portrayed him in film versions of this novel! At top is LLOYD NOLAN, who boldly signs a heavy stock 5" X 3" card in black ballpoint, dating it 26 November 1984 at upper right. Fine. Below this is an irregularly-trimmed, roughly oval 4¼" X 3" slip boldly signed and inscribed in blue ballpoint by GEORGE MONTGOMERY: "Best Wishes / to Donald Burnell / George Montgomery." Very good. Small tape stain at upper and lower margin, barely touching upon a couple of letters. Nolan (1902-85) was a reliable cops-and-robbers actor who played Marlowe (renamed Michael Shayne here) in the 1942 "Time to Kill," and Montgomery (1916-2000) was a prolific actor remembered for Westerns who played Marlowe in the 1947 film noir "The Brasher Doubloon." Laid in is the ideal bookmark: Nolan's original transmittal envelope with recipient's name/address in his hand. Most unusual copy.
Seller: Main Street Fine Books & Mss, ABAA, Galena, IL, U.S.A.
Price: US$2100.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
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 husbands collection. Thats 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 doesnt wrap this one up fast, hes 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.
Seller: The Book Collector, Inc. ABAA, ILAB, Fort Worth, TX, U.S.A.