The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler is the first Chandler novel I read and it was a very entertaining book. Shortly before reading it, I watched the movie starring Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe, so I heard Bogie’s voice narrating the story. A lot of crime novels sort of blend together after a while, but this story was written with a distinct style and has that “noir” feel to it. It was wonderful. The characters are crisp and some are a bit odd, but they are definitely interesting! The descriptions were so vivid that it was easy to picture the setting and the atmosphere and the characters.

Philip Marlowe is, of course, a hard-drinking, tough-guy private detective, who always has a smart remark on his tongue. He works for $25 a day + expenses and is a step ahead of the police and others in figuring out this bizarre and tangled plot. The story is known to be tough to follow and, even in the end, a reader may not be completely convinced of having it all straight. I’m not going to try to explain the storylines – suffice it to say that it has a few twists and turns. At any rate, this is more about the characters and how they interact wtih each other than about the plot.

The story was written and set in the 1930s, it looks at class differences and the seedier side of life. The rich, dying businessman with two wild daughters – or really one wild and one with a mental illness – pitted against or colluding with the local mob/criminal element. Both sides of the conflict used the police to achieve their goals or hurt the other side. There was blackmail, a murder plot, and a few red herrings along the way. The story was fascinating and had a grittiness that drew the reader into a different world. Marlowe is a hero/anti-hero character who has to stay focused on his job while balancing everyone’s game and trying to figure out who is telling him the truth. This is a smart book in every sense of the word.