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Here are some customer reviews of The Big Sleep : This book starts with a bang and ends with boom, and the middle is full of explosions as well. Marlowe is a detective like no other. His selflessness makes one wonder what in his past made him so, especially when every one else in Chandler's LA is rich, crooked, on the take, or just plain immoral. This is a finely tuned intricate plot and Chandler's characters drop classic lines like apples from a tree; often, without warning and with a shocking thud. You've got to read this book. Go read it. This book was actually created from a couple of short stories that Chandler had written earlier. I recently happened to read a collection of short stories which contained two of the main stories which it borrows from. The integration of characters and plots is really amazing. Hats off to the man. Chandler, as a writer, wrote the best novels about L.A. There have been a few, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Day of the Locust. But his four books written between 1939 to 1943 are the best. What makes his books so good? The answer is contain in a single word: style. Chandler's prose has what he said Dashiel Hammett's lacks---overtones, echoes, images. It is also a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control of a great pitcher has over the ball. Chandler wrote with classical dispassion of a romantic and violent society. He had the gift of tongue; he was a poet. Metaphors flowered from him in language utterly suited to the exotic people and places. The inhabitants are all there to life---garage men, room clerks, carhops, grifters, grafters, and house dicks. Marlowe's world cannot be touch by time. There isn't any question about where American noir fiction began: all fingers point to James M. Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. Likewise, there isn't any question about where the tough California P.I. novel started: the credit goes to Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON. But in 1939, a pulp magazine writer fused the two concepts, and the result is a style--street-smart, tough, witty, and compellingly direct--that belongs to one writer only: Raymond Chandler. And his first novel, THE BIG SLEEP, made him a household name. In some respects THE BIG SLEEP is a problematic novel. The plot concerns detective Philip Marlowe's efforts to protect the wealthy Sternwood family from blackmail--but from this starting point it spins out into several complicated directions. Chandler manages this myriad of elements very well through the first half of the novel, but at mid-point the plot breaks apart into a series of loose ends and improbabilities from which it doesn't recover until the last fifty pages--and then only just. But that is almost beside the point. Thanks to Chandler's unique style, you simply can't put the book down long enough to criticize it. THE BIG SLEEP reads with tremendous speed and power, creating a portrait of a seamy world ruled by bisexual pornographers, purring hitmen, cheap hoods, and enameled dames determined to have their way no matter what--a fascinating collection of everything small and mean and gutter common. At the same time, it also presents a surprising degree of integrity in the midst of the corruption: Marlowe won't sell out, no matter what the bribe, and behind their various masks the hardbitten Vivien Sternwood, mysterious Mona Mars, and small-time Harry Jones have enough courage, loyalty, and unexpected integrity to win your respect. THE BIG SLEEP is not the perfect novel. But it is extremely, extremely readable, and with it Chandler paves the way for everything from Sue Grafton's popular mystery series to television crime drama. Chandler's voice here is often imitated, but it has been seldom equalled and never really bested, and both his style and THE BIG SLEEP remain as potent today as they were when the novel was first published. Strongly recommended. I read this book while working the night shift at a psychiatric hospital in New Orleans (all of which you really don't need to know) and I found myself laughing out loud I enjoyed reading it so much. Like finding a friend whose humor you recognize as something special -- that's the appeal of Chandler's writing to me. As a mystery novel, it keeps you guessing, too (it helps that there's not really a solution). A lot of fun to read

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