Big Sleep very reflective of classic detective story of the '30s. Farewell, My Lovely: covoluted plot twists. ( )

Good detective fiction to while away the cold winter months. Philip Marlowe leads through the labyrinthine ways of 1930, 40s Los Angeles and makes an admirable companion. ( )

Excellent introduction and three of the best detective novel ever written. ( )

This was my first introduction to a "hardboiled" thriller. Phillip Marlowe is a private investigator hired to deal with a blackmailer. His client is an ailing elderly General with two unruly adult daughters. The plot twists and winds around murder after murder and through it all private investigator Philip Marlowe is right behind, chasing down clues and killers. It takes place in the 1930s so the economy is a little out of place but the humor and sarcasm of Marlowe is timeless. One of my favorite "shticks" in the story is how everyone keeps asking Marlowe if he is looking for the missing husband of one of the daughters, Vivian. He has been hired to sort out a blackmail scheme, not find a missing man but everyone assumes that is why he is on the case. He ends up accomplishing both but his technique along the way is highly entertaining.

Okay, nobody move. Sit there and read this.

Raymond Chandler is one of the best writers of readable fiction ever to practice his craft. He wrote a googol and six pulp stories for the cheesy mags of his day, and he burned away all the really crap stock phrases while he was doing that. He honed his flensing knife and cut the blubber from his prose while he was writing a story a day or some such, and this novel...one of the early ones...shows how the effort and the time he put in on those stories paid off.

The Big Sleep gives us an indelible icon, Philip Marlowe, tough and smart and street-wise; he's the epitome of what the culture of the 30s and 40s thought of as A Man: Good at thinking as well as fighting.

The reason that today's audiences should still read Chandler's fiction is simple: Human nature is never more nakedly on display, warts and all, than in the best crime fiction, and it's always a good idea to read the best before reading the latest.

Enough said. More won't convince the unwilling. Excellent stuff, this. ( )