Hard-boiled detectives: Then and Now (a philosophical review of The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler)

It’s been a while since I read the classic hard-boiled detectives, and felt like revisiting the pillars of the genre. The Big Sleep is one of those genre-defining works, but a lot has changed in the 80+ years since its publication. Following is a review of the novel, with a summary that is waxing philosophical about how the same genre shifts across a century.

What to Expect

The first novel of Phillip Marlowe, and Chandler’s first full-length novel (he previously published short stories...