The Big Sleep (Penguin Fiction)

The first Philip Marlowe book and one of the best. There's only so many different ways one can talk about Chandler being one of the greatest crime writers ever but this book also has a very good plot, which some of the others fall down on.

An undeniable classic of the genre.

As Hard-boiled as it gets...... (0/0 people found this helpful)

"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. 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."

- Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep

And thus began the criteria for what a private eye would look like and what his moral code would be. Raymond Chandler, author of the Philip Marlowe series of crime novels, set the bar high and generations would follow in his writing footsteps.

Raymond Chandler is considered to be one of the most influential writers of crime fiction and his phenomenal creation of the detective Philip Marlowe has survived decades.

Every time a modern reader discovers a new private eye who is facing some interesting and very tough times but is able to do it with integrity and a strict moral code alongwith a "soldier's eye"; you are meeting Raymond Chandler the writer all over again. And Philip Marlowe his creation is playing a pivotal role in the background.

Raymond Chandler wrote seven detective novels but THE BIG SLEEP is probably his best out of the three in this edition. He was in his fifties when he wrote these novels; yet the first novel cited: THE BIG SLEEP would become an international landmark in the hard-boiled detective genre and would really launch Chandler into the icon that he is today.

The reader will discover unified themes with strong and fully developed characters with incredible imagery and metaphors. Chandler's literary style is distinctive and very crisp. You will love his writing and it brings back nostalgia for a time long past. If you are new to hard-boiled detective stories, this is the series that I would start with

In the first novel THE BIG SLEEP you will be introduced to the Sternwoods: General Sternwood, Vivian and Carmen and all three are interesting studies and all three as General Sternwood notes hasn't "any more moral sense than a cat." General Sternwood is on his deathbed and hired Philip Marlowe to check out why he was being blackmailed by one Arthur Gwynn Geiger. His two daughters, Vivian and Carmen, are quite a handful but General Sternwood feels in part responsible for his plight. As he tells Marlow, "I need not add that a man who indulges in parenthood for the first time at the age of fifty-four deserves all he gets." He describes his two daughters as being "spoiled, exacting, smart and ruthless with the younger girl as being the type who likes to pull wings off flies".

Chandler's novels do highlight crooks and morally-corrupt characters and derelicts, but they are counter-balanced by Marlowe, Bernie Ohls, and General Sternwood--all of whom possess a strong sense of honor, a consideration of what is proper and are for the most part trying to live a life above board.

There are numerous murders that take place in all three of these detective Marlowe novels and a tight interwoven plot which will keep you on the edge of your seat until you get to the last page.

Just as an interesting sideline, when THE BIG SLEEP (the first of Chandler's novels) was published in 1939 there was only an advance of 5,000 copies by Alfred A. Knopf. However, Knopf knew the power and the contribution that this novel would make. They actually took out an advertisement for this book on the front cover of the Publisher's Weekly which was most unusual for a novelist's first book.

The dust jacket flaps read:

"Not since Dashiell Hammett appeared has there been a murder mystery story with the power, pace, and terrifying atmosphere of this one. And like Hammett's this is more than a "murder mystery": it is a novel of crime and character, written with uncommon skill in a tight, tense style which is irresistible."

And so it was. I would highly recommend reading these crime novels and being introduced to Philip Marlowe. THE BIG SLEEP was made into a movie starring Bogart and Bacall with the screen play being written by William Faulkner no less.

Don't miss these novels. I almost did.

Rating: A

Bentley/2007

Nearly Converted (0/0 people found this helpful)

I'm no fan of mysteries, except perhaps the general mystery surrounding life, and I see crime enough in the every day without feeling the need to return to it for entertainment, and I'm not at all a fan of the hard-boiled detective with his hard-to-stomach arrogance (and what an apt adjective, this "hard-boiled," the golden yolk turned gray and flavorless when held over the flame too long). But I'm always a fan of a well written book, no matter what the genre. And Chandler's book qualifies.

It intrigued me to read this, one of the classic firsts, literary birthing grounds for the nearly, by now, cliche persona (Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade being perhaps the very first, followed closely by Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, then variations on a theme with Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer, and a long string of others, the most recent contemporary rendering of which I've come across being the character of Joe January in J. Conrad Guest's "January's Paradigm."). Humphrey Bogart brought several of these to the silver screen, and the character, by whatever name, is now so well known that we can all imitate him at a drop of a fedora, cigarette hanging loose in the corner of our mouths, gal Friday awaiting our command.

As usual, the persona is done arguably best by its inventors. And, as usual, the book has added linguistic pleasures surpassing the cheapened Hollywood screen versions (for example, I noted that the book version of Marlowe isn't nearly the womanizer that Bogart's film version is as he romances Lauren Bacall, a romance that never really happens on the written page, and in his literary version, he even exhibits ethics in the bedroom that any woman can cheer). We get the language -- hard, crisp, fresh, even today. Chandler's spare style might even at moments find comparison in Hemingway. His metaphors delight.

"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts."

"The minutes passed on tiptoe... The light hit pencils of rain and made silver wires of them."

"He had tight brilliant eyes that wanted to look hard, and looked hard as oysters on the half shell."

"The gentle-eyed, horse-faced maid let me into the long gray and white upstairs sitting room with the ivory drapes tumbled extravagantly on the floor and the white carpet from wall to wall. A screen star's boudoir, a place of charm and seduction, artificial as a wooden leg."

Hey, now that's fine writing. It hits the mark with no side trips. I may change my mind about the hard-boiled detective, especially in his softer-boiled moments.

Old School Crime (17/18 people found this helpful)

I read The Big Sleep because I wanted to finally read one of the classics in the crime genre. I couldn't have picked a better book. The plot is interesting, and the style of writing is very descriptive and easy to read. I thought the style (such as referring to some of the women as 'dames' etc.) would be a bit jarring and dated, but instead it turned out to fit perfectly with the character Phillip Marlowe.

That isn't to say the book isn't dated, but that is part of what makes it so enjoyable. The emphasis in many crime novels these days is on forensic evidence and psychological profiling, but the absence of these elements makes for a refreshing change. At first I was yelling "No, you're ruining the trace evidence" (yelling in my head, obviously, as it would have caused a few odd looks if I'd actually yelled loud in the Tube), but after a while you get used to it and just go with the story.

I can recommend this book to anybody who enjoys modern crime novels, but I'm sure others will enjoy it just as much. I only wish it had lasted a bit longer, I finished it within a couple of days even though I had to work in between bits of reading.

Original (10/11 people found this helpful)

It's almost 75 years since the original publication of 'The Big Sleep' and it shows its age all of once, if that.

Reading the book, you can almost feel the ground still shaking from the time Chandler broke it. Marlowe is fresh a character as he always was, breezing through the hell-hole of LA, up to his knees it and still not caring that much; still the man brissles with originality and wit, despite (or maybe because of) every hack crime writer trying to immitate him.

Pick this book up, you won't put it - it took me five days, but you know how a working life can get in the way - as Marlowe begins looking into a blackmail racket and by the end finds himself sunk under five or more homicides. Chandler's control of the pace is wonderful, his plot sublime like he stumbled across it a line at a time - not until the last few pages does he let it all slide and, though the book had pulled and dragged across a couple of places, the ending is gripping. Without having a clue where Chandler's taking you, you'll want to be there all the same.

The Big Sleep (Penguin Fiction)

Raymond Chandler

Reader Reviews:

Crime writing genius (0/0 people found this helpful)

As Hard-boiled as it gets...... (0/0 people found this helpful)

Nearly Converted (0/0 people found this helpful)

Old School Crime (17/18 people found this helpful)

Original (10/11 people found this helpful)

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