The Big Sleep and Other Novels
Raymond Chandler
Penguin Books
SUMMARY: 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 Chandler's brilliant epitaph, The Long Good - Bye. 'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards that others still try to attain.' Sunday Times