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The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler — book cover

The Big Sleep

by Raymond Chandler
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Overview

When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

"Chandler [writes] like a slumming angel and invest[s] the sun-blinded streets of Los Angelos with a romantic presence."
—Ross Macdonald

Synopsis

When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

Library Journal

Chandler is not only the best writer of hardboiled PI stories, he's one of the 20th century's top scribes, period. His full canon of novels and short stories is reprinted in trade paper featuring uniform covers in Black Lizard's signature style. A handsome set for a reasonable price. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

About the Author, Raymond Chandler

Nobody but Chandler could have created a private eye hero as cool as Philip Marlowe, but writers have been trying ever since the author's precedent-setting '40s crime novels were published. Along with Dashiell Hammett, Chandler is revered as a noir father figure; his creation of a romantic L.A. full of dangerous women and crooked characters is so woven into modern consciousness that it's easy to forget that it was fictional.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

"Raymond Chandler is a master." —The New York Times

“[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered.” —The New Yorker

“Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious.” —Robert B. Parker, The New York Times Book Review

“Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye.” —Los Angeles Times

“Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist.” —The Boston Book Review

“Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler’s prose. . . . He wrote like an angel.” —Literary Review

“[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.” —Ross Macdonald

“Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude.” —Erle Stanley Gardner

“Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.” —Paul Auster

“[Chandler]’s the perfect novelist for our times. He takes us into a different world, a world that’s like ours, but isn’t. ” —Carolyn See

Library Journal

Chandler is not only the best writer of hardboiled PI stories, he's one of the 20th century's top scribes, period. His full canon of novels and short stories is reprinted in trade paper featuring uniform covers in Black Lizard's signature style. A handsome set for a reasonable price. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Isaac Anderson

Most of the characters in thes story are tough, many of them are nasty and some of them are both. The language used in this book is often vile - at times so filthy that the publishers have neem compelled to resort to the dash, a device seldom employed in these unsquemish days. As a study in depravity, the story is excellent...-- Books of the Century; New York Times review, February 1939

New York Times Book Review

Raymond Chandler is a master.... [He] has given us a detective who is hard-boiled enough to be convincing. . . and that is no mean achievement.

Book Details

Published
July 1, 1988
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pages
240
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780394758282

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