or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
28 used & new from £2.90
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
The Big Sleep and Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics)
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

The Big Sleep and Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)

by Raymond Chandler (Author) "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..." (more)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
Price: £8.42 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £4.57 (35%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Wednesday, November 11? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
18 new from £6.38 10 used from £2.90

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with The Lady in the Lake: And Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics) by Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep and Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics) + The Lady in the Lake: And Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics)
Price For Both: £18.16

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Lady in the Lake: And Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics)

The Lady in the Lake: And Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Raymond Chandler
4.7 out of 5 stars (3)  £9.74
The Visitor

The Visitor

by Maeve Brennan
5.0 out of 5 stars (3)  £3.79
Killer in the Rain: "The Man Who Liked Dogs"; "The Curtain"; "Try the Girl"; "Mandarin's Jade"; "Bay City Blues"; "The Lady in the Lake"; "No Crime in the Mountains": Short stories

Killer in the Rain: "The Man Who Liked Dogs"; "The Curtain"; "Try the Girl"; "Mandarin's Jade"; "Bay City Blues"; "The Lady in the Lake"; "No Crime in the Mountains": Short stories

by Raymond Chandler
4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £6.84
Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels (Library of America)

Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels (Library of America)

by Dashiell Hammett
£17.22
Uncle Rudolf

Uncle Rudolf

by Paul Bailey
£6.29
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 672 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics; New Ed edition (3 Feb 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 014118261X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141182612
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 16,182 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #2 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > C > Chandler, Raymond

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Product Description

Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel The Big Sleep in 1939. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family - and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures - is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The detective's iconic image burns just as brightly in Farewell My Lovely, on the trail of a missing nightclub crooner. And the inimitable Marlowe is able to prove that trouble really is his business in Raymond Chandler's brilliant epitaph, The Long Goodbye.


About the Author

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and moved to England with his family when he was twelve. He attended Dulwich College, Alma Mater to some of the twentieth century’s most renowned writers. Returning to America in 1912, he settled in California, worked in a number of jobs, and later married. It was during the Depression era that he seriously turned his hand to writing and his first published story appeared in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1933, followed six years later by his first novel. The Big Sleep introduced the world to Philip Marlowe, the often imitated but never-bettered hard-boiled private investigator. It is in Marlowe’s long shadow that every fictional detective must stand – and under the influence of Raymond Chandler’s addictive prose that every crime author must write.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
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. Read the first page
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
See all 5 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Big Sleep and Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics)
67% buy the item featured on this page:
The Big Sleep and Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics) 5.0 out of 5 stars (8)
£8.42
The Big Sleep: An Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction)
16% buy
The Big Sleep: An Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction) 4.5 out of 5 stars (14)
£5.99
The Lady in the Lake: And Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics)
6% buy
The Lady in the Lake: And Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics) 4.7 out of 5 stars (3)
£9.74
The Long Goodbye
5% buy
The Long Goodbye 4.5 out of 5 stars (6)
£5.99
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
5 star:
 (8)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars American Classics, 25 Oct 2002
Ernest Hemingway, in between drinking gallons of booze and writing those cute short sentences of his, once observed that all American literature comes from Mark Twain's 'Huckleberry Finn'. He was right in a sense. Twain's novel was the first to deal with the archetypal North American conflict between city and wilderness, the demands of civilisation and the lure of freedom. You can see Huck right up to the present day: in J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield perhaps, or in Lester Burnham in 'American Beauty'.

And he's right there in Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Forget your Poirots and your Marples. Forget even Sherlock Holmes. Marlowe is the greatest literary detective. What makes him great is his apartness; Chandler's novels are not really about solving mysteries - often the plots don't make a lot of sense - but about the tragedy within the man he created.

Marlowe is tragic. A noble, Arthurian figure (Chandler almost called him Malory, after the author of Morte d'Arthur, but rejected the name as too obvious) he is isolated in the decadent civilisation that surrounds him. He is, as Robert Graves might put it, the one good man in a wholly evil time.

His dilemma - whether to give in to the temptations of the world around him, or to pursue his lonely crusade - is at the centre of each of these novels, and in each novel is explored in a different way. They are all absorbing even though, as I've said, Chandler didn't really care a hoot about plot. (He once said that whenever he ran out of ideas he had a man walk into the room with a gun. So not much pre-planning and storylining going on there, then).

In an essay about detective fiction, Chandler wrote of Marlowe and his Los Angeles:

'Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid... He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.'

Such is Chandler's Marlowe. Read him, and be amazed.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep" and Other Novels, 18 Mar 2009
By Mrs. M. O'connor (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Good to find this book via Amazon. I have been hunting for Raymond Chandler's novels for ages - he is considered "old hat" by most libraries, but his Philip Marlowe (Private I) character is still the best,
even beats Ian Rankin.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Crime comes of age, 26 Feb 2001
By A Customer
With the arrival of Raymond Chandler on the scene,the noir novel began in earnest.Dashiell Hammett had started the movement,with contributions to Black Mask magazine The Continental -Op stories-- and his ensuing full length output,but the qualities that Chandler brought to the genre,and whose echoes are still felt today(Dennis Lehane,James Ellroy,Robert Parker,etc.etc.)were hugely influential.The world weary Marlowe,a white knight who walks the mean streets in slightly tarnished armour,the exemplar of the lonely P.I.The plots,although not(by Chandler's own admission)always logical,gripped and maintained interest,and,certainly not least,he captured a time and an essence of America and American writing that have so obviously stood the test of time...a Raymond Chandler novel is as valid a piece of literature as anything by Thomas Wolfe,Sherwood Anderson,William Faulkner,Sinclair Lewis,or any of the more contemporary writers of today.Although by the time of "Playback" the powers were waning,all Chandler is well worh reading,and there's a very good chance that once you've experienced "crime taken out of the drawing room",you'll never regard Agatha Christie in quite the same light again.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Sublime
Marlowe speeds through five days in Los Angeles following a plot of Byzantine proportions among a feast of mouth-watering characters(Eddie Mars,the Sternwoods,Arthur Gwynn... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Officer Dibble

5.0 out of 5 stars 70 Big Ones & Not Out
If you're thinking of buying this book then you need no introduction to Raymond Chandler. At seventy years old, The Big Sleep is just one of a magnificent trio bundled together... Read more
Published 7 months ago by David Sneath

5.0 out of 5 stars First class writing
This is as it says on the cover a modern classic. Great humourous dialogue, equally intriguing and humourously written internal thought process, great plots and characters... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Dogman

5.0 out of 5 stars As Hard-boiled as it gets......
"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. Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2007 by Bentley

5.0 out of 5 stars It would be rude not to...
Enter the mind of Philip Marlowe a cynical, humane and perpetually sarcastic Los Angeles private dick. Read more
Published on 16 May 2003 by j grant

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject
















i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.