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Feb 02, 2012

Stephen rated it:

4.0 stars. This was the first noir crime fiction book that I ever read and I don't think I could have found a much better place to start. I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy the genre, but decided to test the waters with this classic that introduced the world to the iconic private detective Philip Marlowe. I am very glad I did.

This is a fun, fast read and I was immediately sucked in by the superb dialogue, which was both politically incorrect and just slid off the page an More...

4 comments like (27 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2012

Dan rated it:

The 2011-2012 re-read...
A paralyzed millionaire, General Sternwood, hires Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe to have a talk with a blackmailer with his hooks in his daughter. But what does his daughter's missing husband, Rusty Regan, have to do with it? Marlowe's case will get him entangled in a web of pornography and gambling from which he may never escape...

For the last few years, me and noir detective fiction have gone together as well as strippers and c-section scars. More...

10 comments like (42 people liked it)

Aug 22, 2008

Kirk rated it:

She was the first thing I saw when I walked into the bookstore. Such a looker I damn near tripped over a stack of calf-high hardbacks set next to a stand of morning papers.
"I'm sorry," she said. "We're not quite open yet."
"That's okay," I told her. "Neither are my eyes."
I could tell right away I wasn't going to win any hosannas by being a smart-aleck.
"I need a book," I continued by way of apology. More...

16 comments like (76 people liked it)

Apr 20, 2011

Kemper rated it:

There’s a story regarding the movie version of The Big Sleep that I love, and if it isn’t true, it should be. Supposedly, while working on adapting the book the screenwriters (William Faulkner & Leigh Brackett) couldn’t figure out who killed one of the characters. So they called Raymond Chandler, and after thinking about it for a while, Chandler admitted that he’d completely forgotten to identify the killer of this person in the book and had no idea who did it. Since no one complained about More...

11 comments like (24 people liked it)

Sep 22, 2010

Madeline rated it:

Okay, so it wasn't bad. There's lots of fistfights and shooting and dames, and our detective hero is appropriately jaded and tight-lipped. The bad guys are crazy, the women are freaks in both the streets and the sheets, and there's a subplot involving a pornography racket. Everyone talks in 30's-tastic slang and usually the reader has no idea what everyone keeps yelling about. It's a violent, fast-paced, garter-snapping (the Depression equivalent of bodice-ripping, I imagine) detective thriller, More...

12 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jun 22, 2009

Jon rated it:

My first foray into the crime fiction genre. I liked private investigator Philip Marlowe. An intelligent, patient, witty guy treading water in the morass of 1930s Los Angeles society, both high and low. Amazing how closely connected the upper and lower strata actually are.

Marlowe accepted a job from a very wealthy elderly General, to investigate and thwart a blackmail attempt concerning his daughter. But blackmail wasn't what was on everyone's mind.

It's hard to re More...

8 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 09, 2011

Michael rated it:

Review from Badelynge
The Big Sleep is Raymond Chandler's debut novel published in 1939 and it's a corker featuring Chandler's now iconic hard boiled private detective Philip Marlowe. It's filled with memorable characters; tough guys, wise guys, grifters and chancers all playing their roles in the tangled web of a plot. Although complex I really like how much of the detail in the book actually turns out to be connected with everything else. There is no hiding the answers behind piles of irre More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

Zinta rated it:

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 quali More...

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 26, 2008

Tosh rated it:

As a teenager I couldn't get enough of Raymond Chandler. His prose really hit me between the eyes and to this day i think he's such a remarkable talent. Maybe by now there are others in the crime lit that can out-master the master, and you can imitate his 'voice' but the poetry is his and his alone.

And to be honest I have no strong memory of the plot - except for 'The Long Goodbye' which to me is an extremely sad book. But The Big Sleep, even by its title has a dream state, and I More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 15, 2011

Henry rated it:

Philip Marlowe here,I'm going to tell you a little story of my last caper.Listen good, rich, sick, General Sternwood hired me to help him resolve a blackmail attempt. One of his two wacky daughters, Carmen, got in a pickle.I'll not go into details, but say it's kind of a smutty affair.You'll need a fireman's hose to clean up the slime. After a few killings and a suicide, people that nobody will miss. (I earned my 500 bucks) They kicked hard but I kicked harder.A shamus uses a raincoat not just More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2012

Alberto rated it:

For the first third of the novel the writing is superb. Pure poetry in the voice of the tough cynic narrator, Philip Marlowe. But then Chandler starts trying to tie all the loose ends and pays more attention to arrange the plot than to the style, which is great but not as good as when the story just flows. When the first part of the case is solved the author rests and the writing recovers itself, but then things go messy again until the end.

About this specific edition I must say it' More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 15, 2011

matt rated it:

I'm usually a plot-challenged person. It takes me awhile to be able to figure out what's going on when a movie or book plot gets too complicated, with the double-crosses and the lies and the reversals...the chess game is usually too much for me.

I don't usually hold that against the story I'm being told, I just figure it wasn't my cup of tea and let it go.

This one, though, I loved every minute of and will absolutely have to reread someday. Just to re-savor all the little cra More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2008

Kristin rated it:

As long as I'm on about detectives...Raymond Chandler's novels epitomized the original hard-boiled detective. You know, the humorless Humphrey Bogart in a trenchcoat, chain-smoking while he wades his way through a mess of lies and tight-lipped suspects. All the while providing the most amazingly accurate and outright entertaining descriptions of everything he sees. There's nothing bright and cheery in these books. Murder is not sugar-coated here, and that is evident in the overall tone of the bo More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2008

Patrick rated it:

About 80 pages in, I realized I had lost the plot, but didn't really care because of how amazingly "rich" the inner and outer dialogue of Phillip Marlowe, Chandler's hero private detective, is. It was hard to keep track of all the characters and murders, but if you can get 70%, it's worth it for all the golden tossed-off simile/metaphors that make up the narrative voice that we now think of as noir cliche. One cool thing is that in Stephen King's "On Writing," he mentions h More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 04, 2011

David rated it:

This Raymond Chandler novel was originally written in 1939 and introduced us to one of the world's better known fictional Private Investigators in Philip Marlowe. And what a great character. Marlowe was completely different to those his contemporaries were writing about. There was none of the prim prissiness associated with the English authors of the time such as Agatha Christie. Marlowe was tough, dirty, gritty and seedy. People drank, smoked, gambled and women were loose and flirtatious. Quite More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 25, 2011

Yuki rated it:

Wow! Kicking myself for not reading this as soon as I picked it up on bookswap months ago. I find good noir electrifying! I've been mucking about with some good (and one awful) but not great reads this summer, and this puts me back on track. Chandler's Marlowe had me at: "I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it." First paragraph.

As Richard mentioned, much of the prose reads like poetry: "Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, al More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 26, 2010

Rauf rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 16, 2008

J. rated it:

What more can be said about Raymond Chandler's first novel, published in 1939? Dashiell Hammett may have preceded Chandler with Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, but Chandler's style, as well as protagonist Phillip Marlowe, stand on their own.

Both Hammett and Chandler can be credited with creating this genre, from which the work the likes of Mickey Spillane, Erle Stanley Gardner and Elmore Leonard spawned. While none can perhaps be considered literary art, they are nonetheless art wi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 11, 2007

Cecilia rated it:

I now see why everyone compares most mystery writers to Raymond Chandler. He’s not only the best, but considering that The Big Sleep was written in 1939, he was one of the first. The novel begins like most detective novels of today…setting the stage for the crime, the criminals, and the intrigue. Philip Marlowe is the detective of all detectives….cool and suave and always knowing just what to say at just the right time…and mostly dark, mysterious and possibly up to no good. What struck me first More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 02, 2007

Steve rated it:

The greatest and archetypal noir detective thriller. The plot is secondary to his attempt at characterizing a man who is struggling to be in the world but not of the world.

The plot is famously confusing and it's almost irrelevant who the wrongdoers really are. Some critics have taken this as laziness or a lack of technical skill. While this is a story that fuses some of his previously used plots from his short stories, Chandler had previously laid out what he is attempting to d More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2009

Leota rated it:

Well, I have a crush on the main character. That's a fact. That almost got me up to 5 stars. But, if I'm going to be totally honest, the plot was a bit convoluted for me. This was my first Chandler detective story, and I never got my ah-ha! moment, mainly (I think) because I was so busy trying to keep all the characters straight. That being said, Chandler is a master with language and quick, razor sharp descriptions (that are often funny as well), which I loved.

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2007

Dave rated it:

i gave up on the agonizingly hard-to-follow plot of this potboiler, and turned my attention to the prose, to lines like: "dead men are heavier than broken hearts." chandler is at once hardboiled and literary, aphoristic and no-bullshit. he steals poetic forms and formulas from the flowery greats, then toughens them up for a seedy night in 30's l.a.: "she lay still now, her pale face against the pillow, her eyes large and dark and empty as rain barrels in a drought." the narra More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 30, 2008

Steven rated it:

Chandler gives Marlowe a strong first-person voice that carries the story forward right from the beginning. Marlowe’s casual curiosity at the beginning is an interesting technique, creating tension and expectation while also lulling the reader a bit. This novel has great eccentric characterizations; just about everyone is out-of-whack except Marlowe. The descriptions are vivid, although a lot of the similes don’t work or are cliché (they may not have been cliché when he wrote them). The suspense More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 06, 2011

David rated it:

Comment upon second reading: Philip Marlowe's fate is the same as it was the first time I read this book: to be a five-star character trapped in a three-star novel (which, on a metaphysical level, means that it is actually a four-star novel).

Comment upon third reading: Okey, Raymond Chandler, you win. I'm no longer obsessing about the (not inconsiderable) defects in this novel's plot, which has freed my brain to marvel at the incredible craft of your writing at the level of the ch More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 05, 2009

Shawn rated it:

Right up my alley. I am a noir/crime fiction fan, and this is the best I have read. Chandler's prose seems effortless. And yet it is brilliant and funny and daunting. Also, Phillip Marlowe is one of my all-time favorite characters. Read this book.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 28, 2007

Otis rated it:

A classic LA detective novel - loved it. The opening paragraph says it all:

"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid-october, with the sun not shining, and a look of hard rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-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 didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I wa More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2011

mzd rated it:

I first read this yeeeeeeeears ago and it strikes me that this is slightly more pleasurable to read than it is when you're listening to it. The narrative is sharp and crackling and more fun when it's inside your head rather than in your ears. I have no idea why. However, my favourite Mr. Rochester is voicing Philip Marlowe in this audiobook and since I would listen to him reading a phonebook, I was more than happy to listen to this.

The only time I've ever enjoyed noir is in Dead Men Don't Wear P More...

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Aug 05, 2011

Jared added it

The quintessential detective story. While Dashiell Hammett is credited with creating the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction, Chandler took it to an unmatched level of poetry ("Dead men are heavier than broken hearts"). How often do you read a tale about blackmail, pornography, extortion, and multiple murder that can also be described as "beautiful"? Well, this is one. The words seem to flow onto the page as if Chandler wrote it while dreaming. In Philip Marlowe, he has cr More...

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May 07, 2010

Elan added it

I knew Philip Marlowe first from the old-time radio series, and so in my mind's ear Gerald Mohr narrated every crisp, hard line of Chandler's prose. It's difficult to escape imagining the show's stock character actors in the book's commonplace roles -- the femme fatale, the dangerous brute, the unctuous crime boss, Jeff Corey as the ambivalent cop -- and yet the book's subject matter is true noir, rife of corruption and depravity that would have never made it onto the air in the 1940s. Gambling, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 02, 2009

Rhiannon rated it:

At first I fell asleep pretty easily when reading this book. I would love to say that I dove right into it and loved every word of this masterpiece by Chandler, but really, I fell asleep frequently until getting at least 100 pages into it. I also fell asleep during the movie, which is supposed to be equally impressive. After 100 pages, though, something changed. The plot become (possibly?) easier to understand and I was immersed in the world Chandler creates with his unique prose. Anyone who's More...

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