The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
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The Big Sleep

Author: Raymond Chandler

Narrator: Scott Brick

Unabridged: 6 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/15/2020

Synopsis

One of the most acclaimed works of crime fiction ever written, The Big Sleep is the first novel featuring Raymond Chandler’s iconic creation Philip Marlowe, hailed as the “quintessential urban private eye” (Los Angeles Times).

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

“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

When old man Sternwood, a dying millionaire, hires Philip Marlowe to expose the blackmailer of one of his troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than simple extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, and seduction are just a few of the complications standing in the way of completing the task at hand. And just as Marlowe feels he’s getting ahold of the situation, he discovers the first body.

About The Author

RAYMOND CHANDLER (1888 - 1959) was the master practitioner of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Although he was born in Chicago, Chandler spent most of his boyhood and youth in England where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a freelance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, Chandler served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the Royal Flying Corps (R. A. F.). In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing fiction, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. Chandler's detective stories often starred the brash but honorable Philip Marlowe (introduced in 1939 in his first novel, The Big Sleep) and were noted for their literate presentation and dead-on critical eye. Never a prolific writer, Chandler published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. Some of Chandler's novels, like The Big Sleep, were made into classic movies which helped define the film noir style. In the last year of his life he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in La Jolla, California on March 26, 1959.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kirk on August 22, 2008

She was the first thing I saw when I walked into the bookstore. Such a looker I damn near tripped over a stack of calf-high hardbacks set next to a stand of morning papers. "I'm sorry," she said. "We're not quite open yet." "That's okay," I told her. "Neither are my eyes." I could tell right away I......more

Goodreads review by Bill on July 20, 2024

It is always a pleasure to revisit a good book and find it even better than you remember. But it is humbling to discover that what you once thought was its most obvious defect is instead one of its great strengths. That was my recent experience with Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. I had read it twi......more

Goodreads review by Janet on June 25, 2024

No matter how many times I read Chandler's Big Sleep - and I wouldn't like to count how many - I am always startled by the masterly audacity of the opening lines. Four sentences is all it takes and we've got the time, the weather and where we're located; we know who's talking to us, what he's wearin......more

Goodreads review by Alejandro on July 29, 2016

A killing reading! PAINT IT BLACK A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. That was the line that hook me when I watched the classic film adaptation, the one produced in 1946, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. While I loved the whole movie, that scene b......more

Quotes

"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.” —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

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