The Big Sleep
Private investigator Philip Marlowe is summoned to the mansion of General Sternwood, a dying, fabulously wealthy old man with two wild, spoiled daughters. The job sounds simple: deal with a bookseller who is blackmailing the general over his younger daughter, Carmen. But almost as soon as Marlowe takes the case, bodies begin to turn up, and the tidy blackmail scheme unravels into a tangle of pornography, gambling, missing persons, and murder.
Moving through a rain-slicked, corrupt Los Angeles, Marlowe follows the case wherever it leads, trading wisecracks with cops and criminals alike and holding to his own battered code in a world where almost no one else has one. The plot twists back on itself, but the real pleasure is the voice: hard, funny, and unexpectedly lyrical.
The Big Sleep was Raymond Chandler's first novel and the debut of Philip Marlowe, one of the most influential characters in crime fiction. A cornerstone of the hardboiled and noir traditions, it helped define the American detective story.
The wisecracking, incorruptible private investigator.
The dying millionaire who hires Marlowe.
The general's wild younger daughter at the center of the blackmail.
The general's elder daughter, sharp and secretive.