Interesting, especially for Marlowe's voice and the view of prohibition-era LA, but I think I like Dashiell Hammett better. So far. ( )

I really love these hard-boiled detective stories. This one is right up there with Red Harvest. Phillip Marlowe does the job he is paid to do and you get a little extra if it suits him. I'm fascinated by characters like these that have the ability to bluff, outwit, and outsmart their opponents. It's the classic superhero detective. The last straight arrow in a crooked world. Marlowe is hired to shake down the person who is blackmailing General Sherwood. His daughters are running wild and get mixed up with the wrong sort of people. They are used regularly to extort money from the rich General. Marlowe is hired to put a stop to it, but Marlowe gets more than her bargained for and so does the General. The story seems solved about a quarter of the way through, but it's just a smaller piece in the bigger story. Surprise ending too, great stuff!Jealousy is a bad motive for his type. Top-flight racketeers have business brains. They learn to do things that are good policy and let their personal feelings take care of themselves. p. 64I went upstairs again and sat in my chair thinking about Harry Jones and his story. It seemed a little too pat. It had the austere simplicity of fiction rather than the tangled woof of fact. p. 107Quotes p. 110"I'm a copper," he said. "Just a plain ordinary copper. Reasonably honest. As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style. That's mainly why I asked you to come in this morning. I'd like you to believe that. Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred hard guys that got knocked over on their first caper and never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don't run our country that way."What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.125 ( )

Being the first pulp novel I have ever read, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler is astonishing and instantly classic. I loved the style of writing. Though there is a lot of description, it does not distract from the story. Marlowe epitomizes the hard-boiled detective and the femme fatales are far from dull and one-dimensional. I do believe it is impossible to hate this book, at least entirely. ( )

Chandler's first novel and I have to say that I like his no frills fast paced approach. At times it seems as though he ties his knots a little too conveniently but even so all in all it's intriguing and entertaining enough and a good way to spend a couple or three days. ( )

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”

Raymond Chandler was great at inventing one-liners. When he thought them up, he would write them in a notebook to be used at a later date in one of his books. He was also great at inventing the vernacular associated with the hard-boiled detective story.

This book is a study in the seedy side of the human condition that permits a person to commit crimes of murder and black mail. It is seen through the eyes of a misanthrope detective whose moral compass guides the reader through the tangled web that is the story of Los Angeles in the 1930s and 40s.

I did not enjoy the plot but plot was not that important to Chandler. I did like the dialogue of the characters though it reads a little short and choppy. It seems the book could have been better with a little more work on the story. It was definitely style over story.

It was fun watching the movie after reading the book. It made the movie that much more enjoyable. Bogart was great as Philip Marlowe. I think the book would have worked better as a movie script. ( )