I once almost got in to a fist fight with an acquaintance for suggesting that Dashiell Hammett was a better writer than Raymond Chandler. I was trying to rile him and was (kind of) joking. I've always preferred Hammett's style - more forthright, and yet intricate and layered. I will never forget the feeling of utter shock and breathlessness on reading Red Harvest in a single sitting; THIS was written in 1929??? Tarantino has nothing on this dude! 
 Rereading The High Window my mind isn't changed exactly, but I realise that perhaps I am jaded to Chandler through familiarity. His voice and style so absolutely defined through his fiction and screenwriting what we think of as noir - and the detective fiction and cinema that has come since - that it is easy to take him for granted, but the writing is simply superb. The plotting goes without saying, and the unexpected turn of metaphor is nonpareil. Of course, we have to give a pass to the sexism and homophobia as very much a product of its time, but this is superb, seminal, detective fiction. I would go so far as to say it transcends to become literature. 
 But i still think Hammett was better and am ready to roll up my sleeves.