The Big Sleep (Penguin Fiction)
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
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 ...
About the Author
Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the all-time classic American crime novels,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Big Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction) (Paperback)
First of all, I should say that I can't believe no one else has written a review of this wonderful crime novel. I'm happy to rectify this oversight now.For me, Raymond Chandler's first novel, published in 1939, stands as not only one of the great crime novels of the 20th century, but one of the best genuinely American prose works in all of literature. Only an ignorant snob could argue that this isn't a piece of literature and a work of art as well as a highly entertaining story of detection. Philip Marlowe is Chandler's laconic private eye hero, an urban knight and man of honour operating in a grim world, a tough guy with a hard shell covering a man of culture and learning. Chandler writes both lines of dialogue and first person narrative to die for, combining a poet's use of metaphor with the hard-edged wit of the mean streets of Los Angeles, whose dark underbelly Chandler explores in his novels. The plot of this mystery is legendary for its labyrinthine structure as Marlowe takes on a case for the wealthy General Sternwood, getting mixed up in murder, sex and a pornography racket. I couldn't praise this masterpiece enough. Suffice to say that I consider it to be flawless.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must read,
By
This review is from: The Big Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction) (Paperback)
I'd never read any Raymond Chandler before but this came up in a book club I'd recently joined. In our club we have a month per book and I read this in just a few days. The storyline is good and ticks over nicely but it's Chandler's descriptive powers that make this a great read. '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.'(opening lines)Think it's in the top 100 list of must reads.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hard boiled madness.,
By
This review is from: The Big Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction) (Paperback)
Philip Marlowe is possibly one of the coolest characters ever created, hes the embodiment of that wonderful hard boiled detachment that you just dont come across done even remotely successfully elsewhere(Im looking at you Sam Spade). The big sleep is in my opinion the top crime novel, full of wonderful 30's language, incredibly diverse and complex characters and a plot so enthralling and nuanced ive had to go back several times to enjoy this book properly. However understandably a plot such as this might be for the Extremely casual reader a little bit confusing however please dont let that put you off because its so worth it.To finish up there are a number of famous crime novels from this period and earlier again that have become quite influential in film and literature but if you want the big daddy of all our great modern hard boiled stories(Kiss kiss bang bang, payback etc) then look no further!
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
