The Big Sleep

Mystery and thriller · Noir

First published: 1939
Print length: 261 pagesImPress Mystery, 2002

Description

Los Angeles private investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy, dying general to stop a blackmailer targeting his younger daughter. The general also mentions the unexplained disappearance of his older daughter’s husband, another loose end in a family crowded with secrets. Marlowe traces the blackmail to a bookstore concealing a pornography-lending operation, but the case quickly expands to include murder, missing evidence, compromising photographs, and the death of the family chauffeur. Connections to gambler Eddie Mars pull him deeper into a world of shifting alliances and repeated betrayals. Marlowe’s stubborn search for coherence drives a hard-boiled mystery in which money protects corruption, desire clouds every account, and the truth remains buried beneath competing deceptions.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Direct · Spare · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Atmospheric · Dark · Suspenseful · Tense

Structure

Linear

Focus

Mystery · Plot · Voice

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

Crime and punishmentKnowledge and truthMoralityPowerWealth

About Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter whose compact body of detective fiction helped establish Los Angeles as a defining landscape of noir. He began writing crime stories in his forties, after losing his job as an oil-company executive, and first published in the pulp magazine Black Mask. His debut novel, The Big Sleep, introduced private investigator Philip Marlowe, the central figure in nearly all of his novels. Across The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window, and The Lady in the Lake, Chandler sends Marlowe through cases whose apparent simplicity gives way to networks of money, secrecy, violence, and compromised authority. The plots are intricate, but Chandler’s distinction lies equally in voice: direct, atmospheric prose sharpened by dry wit, vivid description, and alert dialogue. The Long Goodbye broadens this method through Marlowe’s uneasy friendship with Terry Lennox, bringing loyalty and personal responsibility closer to the foreground. Chandler wrote only seven completed novels, alongside short stories and screenplays, but his recurring detective and unsentimental vision gave the work an unusual coherence.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: ImPress Mystery
Language: English
ISBN: 9780762188802

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.