THE BIG SLEEP BY RAYMOND CHANDLER
PENGUIN BOOKS (PAPERBACK), 2005, FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1939
251 PAGES
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THIS BOOK IS PART OF MY POPSUGAR READING CHALLENGE 2015 (HTTP://WWW.POPSUGAR.COM/LOVE/READING-CHALLENGE-2015-36071458). THE CATEGORY FOR THIS BOOK IS ‘A POPULAR AUTHOR’S FIRST BOOK’.
I CHOSE TO READ THE BIG SLEEP BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT SOUNDED INTERESTING. I TRIED TO GO FOR THE LESS OBVIOUS CHOICES FOR EACH CATEGORY SO I COULD READ NEW AUTHOR’S.
BLURB FROM THE COVER
Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood’s two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA’s seedy backstreets, Marlowe’s got his work cut out – and that’s before he stumbles over the first corpse…
EXTRACT
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
REVIEW
This was my first time reading Raymond Chandler.
I enjoyed The Big Sleep. Chandler has a talent for writing very vivid and rich descriptions that make everything on the page come to life inside your head. You almost expect to look up from the book and see Marlowe pacing your living room smoking and firing questions at you. I loved all the twists and turns that had you reeling from one extreme to the next. The Big Sleep is worth reading to see the original crime noir fiction. One thing I noticed is that The Big Sleep hasn’t aged despite the fact it was published back in 1939. The Big Sleep has aged well and is still as fresh, vibrant and full of life as it was back then. I’d probably read some of Chandler’s novels at some point if only to get a head-full of his rich, luscious prose again.
RATING
