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The Big Sleep (Penguin fiction) | 
 enlarge | Author: Raymond Chandler
Creator: Ian Rankin
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £2.96
You Save: £5.03 (63%)
New (26) Used (17) from £2.22
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 6350
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0140108920
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140108927
ASIN: 0140108920
Publication Date: July 7, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 I was everything a well dressed private detective ought to be.I was calling on four million dollars December 20, 2008
Peter Wade (Colchester England)
I was everything a well dressed private detective ought to be.I was calling on four million dollars
This story has been made famous by the film which is a classic. This book is to be read slowly and savoured. You cannot rush it as the dialogue and description are so dense you can miss what is going on.
Chandler had learnt his trade by studying the pulps in which he had his crime stories published. As a result he did not waste any words as he knew that he had to hook and keep his readers. In the pulps he was paid by the word.
He created his own world of private eyes and sharp talking dames and gangsters. The plot is almost irrelevant as it is just a method of getting us to met these people and to read the description and follow the dialogue.
Some say they have dated but you believe his descriptions and although he is not using modern police methods we believe it entirely. The plot is convoluted and the murders come thick and fast.
Chandler has his hero wrap it all up at the end as though you really care. He gets to meet tough cops , gangsters and women who throw themselves at him and who he turns down.
He does the job his way and if he thinks he hasn't performed well enough he gives them their money back. You can imagine Chandler sitting at his typewriter honing the lines and producing description and dialogue that is just too good to be true. I often wonder if Chandler actually used existing words or if he made up some of the slang.
A great book and great film spoil yourself and read it but don't rush it.
Highly recommended.
An Immortal Murder Mystery November 16, 2008
The Piglit (Sheffield England)
The combination of prose that is both sparse and flowing, a dense plot and a tragic yet oddly subtle denoument would be enough to make The Big Sleep one of the greatest, and most timeless of detective stories. But Chandler took the genre in this and subsequent novels to a literary level by an incisive, critical but above all, informed, portrayl of personal motivation and social setting. In doing so he not only wrote novels which had the greatest reality and integrity, but consequently broke the mould of inspector-calls-murder-at-the-vicarage stuff. Indeed the real tragedy for me is that his influence is not more keenly felt in crime writing, for unrealistic and repressed Christiesque dross is to this day being produced and eagerly consumed in quantity.
An essential and unforgettable author.
And please Google his essay "The Simple Art of Murder" when you've logged out of here!
 Maybe I missed the point?? October 26, 2008
Janie U (England)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I loved the way that this book was written. The first person narrative made me feel as though I was in the middle of the action and this book is all action, described in immense detail.
The conversations are very snappy, although I began very quickly to think that Marlowe was just too smart for his own good.
About half way through the book the plot lost my interest, I began to not stop bothering about what he was investigating.
From that point onwards I struggled to get to the end of the book but the last couple of chapters were OK when the strands were pulled together to a conclusion.
I clearly wasn't as impressed as most people but will maybe read other books by Raymond Chandler as I did enjoy his style.
Iconic Roman Noir October 22, 2008
Martin Turner (Birmingham, England)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very few characters fill a space in our collective imagination in the way that Marlowe does. From the 1946 Humphrey Bogart to Calvin & Hobbes's character 'Tracer Bullet', and Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit he is the epitome of the hard-boiled detective, recording his experiences in a cryptic, sardonic and world-weary style which is instantly recognised, and navigating his way through a world of triple-crosses with a mixture of mercenary self-preservation and unselfish honour.
The Big Sleep was the first true Philip Marlowe story -- although earlier short-stories were republished later with the lead characters renamed Marlowe. It is full of Chandler's delightful, elliptical prose, which sets out the look, feel and smell of every scene in less words than one would believe possible, and demand maximum attention if one is to understand the storyline, or even make sense of the dialogue. Surprisingly, we learn far more about the character than we might expect: his home is sacrosanct, he doesn't see himself as a Sherlock Holmes, he cares more about his professional honour than he does about money. Even in this first novel, Marlowe is already a deeper character than most of the later imitations ever became.
This is art, of an extraordinarily stylish and detailed kind. And it's also a fantastic story, flawless and gripping from start to finish.
Crime writing genius March 25, 2008
Spring-heeled Jack (London, England)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The first Philip Marlowe book and one of the best. There's only so many different ways one can talk about Chandler being one of the greatest crime writers ever but this book also has a very good plot, which some of the others fall down on.
An undeniable classic of the genre.
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