The Big Sleep: A Novel by Raymond
Chandler
One Aspect
His thin, claw-like hands were folded loosely on the rug, purple-nailed. A
few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for
life on a bare rock. Published in 1939, when Raymond Chandler was 50,
this is the first of the Philip Marlowe novels. Its bursts of sex, violence, and
explosively direct prose changed detective fiction forever. She was
trouble. She was tall and rangy and strong-looking. Her hair was black
and wiry and parted in the middle. She had a good mouth and a good
chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full.
Whiskey drinking, gun toting private detectives who arent afraid to duke it
out with fists or guns, conniving femme fatales with more schemes and
more lies than you can shake a stick at, and a complex crime story in
which the layers and secrets are slowly pulled back and revealed. In the
end, nobody but Philip Marlowe rises above the filth. This is probably the
defining novel of the entire hard-boiled detective genre, often copied, but
never equaled. Philip Marlowe is given a job by a dying old man to find out
who is blackmailing one of his daughters. Marlowe becomes entangled in
a web of lies as uncovering one mystery reveals another. This theme has
by now been well worn and is almost certainly cliched, but Chandler is the
master. His prose is terrific: You know what Canino will do? Beat my
teeth out and kick me in the stomach for mumbling. If youre reading this
review, you probably already know a fair bit about the genre, the author,
and the connection to some of the great Bogie films. The best
recommendation that I can give this novel is that it reads just like the film.
That is, it has the same feel as the film `The Big Sleep and the other Bogie
hard-boiled detective films. The dark, broding atmosphere, the dialogue,
you just get transported back to pre-war LA. Reading this book I felt as if I
was with Bogie trying to dodge lethal bullets and even deadlier women! A
great read!
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