The big sleep
Book 1 of A Philip Marlowe Mystery
Language: English
20th Century American Novel And Short Story Blind California Classics Crime Detective Detective and mystery stories Detectives English as a Second Language Fiction Fiction - Mystery Film & Video Foreign Language Study General Hard-Boiled Historical History & Criticism Literature: Classics Los Angeles Los Angeles (Calif.) Los Angeles (Calif.) - Fiction Marlowe Mystery Mystery & Detective - General Mystery & Detective - Hard-Boiled Mystery & Detective - Historical Mystery & Detectives Mystery crime suspense Performing Arts Philip (Fictitious character) Philip (Fictitious character) - Fiction Political Private Investigators Private investigators - California - Los Angeles - Fiction Screenplays Thriller
Publisher: New York : Vintage Books, 1992.
Published: Dec 15, 1992
Description:
SUMMARY: When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in."Chandler [writes] like a slumming angel and invest[s] the sun-blinded streets of Los Angelos with a romantic presence."--Ross Macdonald"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid....He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.
This is the Code of the Private Eye as defined by Raymond Chandler in his 1944 essay 'The Simple Act of Murder.' Such a man was Philip Marlowe, private eye, an educated, heroic, streetwise, rugged individualist and the hero of Chandler's first novel, The Big Sleep. This work established Chandler as the master of the 'hard-boiled' detective novel, and his articulate and literary style of writing won him a large audience, which ranged from the man in the street to the most sophisticated intellectual.
Marlowe subsequently appeared in a series of extremely popular novels, among them The Lady in the Lake, The Long Goodbye, and Farewell, My Lovely." ~ Elizabeth Diefendorf, editor, The New York Public Library's Books of the Century, p. 112.
Selected as one of Time Magazine's All-Time 100 Novels, with the following review: "'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.' This sentence, from the first paragraph of The Big Sleep, marks the last time you can be fully confident that you know what's going on.
The first novel by Raymond Chandler at the age of 51.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Chandler's first novel, published in 1939, introduces Philip Marlowe, a 38-year-old P.I. moving through the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s. This classic case includes as characters a paralyzed California millionaire, his two psychotic daughters, plus blackmail, murder, corrupt wealth, secret vices, family scandal, and more.
"Chandler [writes] like a slumming angel and invest[s] the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence."
Ross Macdonald