Jun 25, 2008
The Big Sleep
Author: Raymond Chandler
Pages: 234
Year Published: 1939
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler’s first novel, introduces us to one of the most famous detectives in fiction, Phillip Marlowe. Marlow is hired to find out who is trying to blackmail the daughter of his rich client and in the process uncovers a nest of pornography, money and murder. Marlowe has to navigate his way through a maze of deception, which ultimately winds up leading him to an unlikely end of the case.
Chandler, along with Dashiel Hammett, is one of the masters of the “noir” detective story. His writing style has been emulated in everything from fantasy novels to William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It’s so iconic, it often winds up in parody of the genre as well.
The story itself is not bad, although The Maltese Falcon is better. It’s the way the story is told that is the real gem. Tight writing with wonderful metaphor and, what must have been in the 1940’s scandalous descriptions of a seedy underworld make reading the book a pleasure.
A cornerstone of the “noir” subgenre, The Big Sleep is still a wonderful book and highly recommended.
Other participants in the “52 in 52″ meme who reviewed books recently include:
- Jeremy reviews Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother.
- Jamie reviews Mort by Terry Pratchett.
- Heliologue reviews Oliver Sack’s Musicophilia: Stories of Music and the Brain.
-K
Can I borrow that book from you?
The Maltese Falcon is elegant, no doubt, but it’s unquestionably The Big Sleep that people are thinking of when they enumerate the iconic properties of the archetypal private eye novel. I don’t just mean the hard-hitting, simile-laden first-person narration, but the thematic centrality of the death of chivalry (Marlowe’s insistence on being a knight in a world that doesn’t value honour anymore).
It’s good to read another 52-in-52-er (I recently started doing it myself), though I see that you’ve gone on hiatus. Hope you manage to get back to it soon.
Oh, I never stopped reading. I’d sooner stop breathing first.
I just took a break from trying to write about it. Have no fear. I’ve got much too big a mouth to stay silent for any real length of time.
-K