The Big Sleep 1939 detective book

Name: The Big Sleep
Rating: 4.6 (87 reviews)

The Big Sleep (1939, United States)

A private detective, Philip Marlowe, is hired by General Sternwood, a wealthy older gentleman, to stop a blackmailer from making any further demands from him. The general himself is bedridden and fragile, but he has two daughters, who got involved with the wrong people. The older one, Vivian, was married to a former alcohol smuggler, Rusty Regan, who has disappeared without any warning about a month ago. The younger one, Carmen, got into the more wild lifestyle the general would prefer, including gambling, heavy drinking, partying, which ultimately led her to be exposed to a blackmail using the checks she was signing for the money she was borrowing from loan sharks and then lost in a casino. Marlowe sets out to find Arthur Geiger, who is behind that blackmail, and finds a peculiar bookstore he is running on one of the main streets. A lot of men go in, they all leave with brown paper packages, but the secretary who after the store has very little knowledge about the books. While following some clues, Marlowe ends up watching the Geiger’s house when a shot rang out.

The Raymond Chandler novel, later turned into a movie (starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall), is the blueprint for not only other Marlowe novels, but also for a lot of neo-noir productions. The cynical main character, who seems to be just after the money, the characters that are nothing what they look like at the first glance, the police force which is on a verge between what is lawful and not, the plot that seems to be going nowhere, but in reality unveils the truth about people involved.

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