The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? ... 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.

That is Philip Marlowe speaking.  A private eye in 1930s Los Angeles, Marlowe is the narrator of The Big Sleep.  He is hired by a dying rich man to investigate a blackmail attempt against his youngest daughter. One thing leads to another, and the case grows to involve first a missing person, then an abduction, and finally several murders.  All this despite the fact that Marlowe wants to investigate the blackmail case only.  Yes, indeed, and against his will, Marlowe became part of the nastiness.

The Big Sleep is the first of Chandler's novels to feature Philip Marlowe, it is also the first piece by Chandler I have read.  Frankly, I was until now only familiar with his work through parodies, so I was pleasantly surprised to find Chandler's writing has a greater quality than I had been led to believe.  The plotting is complex, the pace of the story is pleasingly brisk, and Marlowe is an amiable narrator (despite the tough mask he wears) with a great turn of phrase.  For example, on going to meet a prospective employer, he says:

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.

Or, on being hung-over:

I woke up with a motorman’s glove in my mouth ...

Or, describing the natural world:

The sunshine was as empty as a head waiter’s smile.

Chandler uses phrases like this sparingly, but they come often enough to keep the prose lively and to show the reader how Marlowe's mind works.

I had great fun reading The Big Sleep.  Even now, so many years after its first publication, the story is still fresh and intriguing.  Marlowe's world is long since dead, sleeping the big sleep, but its spirit is alive and well in these pages.