Book Review: The Big Sleep (I FINALLY Got Around To This One)

I finally did it: I read Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, which everybody agrees deserves a solid place on every Top 100 Novel Book List of the last century. When I say “read,” I mean I listened to the audio during my work commute, which is a must if you love reading and have limited time.

There are seven novels written by Chandler featuring the detective Philip Marlowe. The eighth novel was started by Chandler and finished by Robert B. Parker. Then, like Sherlock Holmes, there are a number of authorized Marlowe novels by other authors, but that’s an article for another time.

Quick Synopsis Of The Big Sleep:

Chandelier is hired by an elderly General Sternwood to investigate into a book dealer blackmailing his out-of-control daughter. From there the plot grows very complex, and I admit I had a hard time following it listening to the audio on my morning drive, without having the benefit of rereading passages or flipped back through book.

There is a lot going on, with characters lying, double-crossing, and acting in their own self-interest in the criminal world while Marlowe investigates in a chivalrous way, with a old code of honor that doesn’t fit into the changing world of 1930s LA. One of the murders in the book is never even solved, although the story is satisfactorily resolved.

A Few Of My Takeaways:

I’ve only been to LA once in my life and that trip was brief. I went for a basketball tournament, saw to a Clippers game, celebrated New Year’s Eve at a TGI Fridays (I think that was the place, but it could have been a similarly interchangeable restaurant), and that’s about it, so I didn’t really experience LA or get to explore it.

This novel helped me start to wrap my mind around the city, granted it helped me start to understand 1930s LA, but sometimes old books provides a better, foundational level of understanding of a city than any modern guidebook does. I feel like this book gave me a glimpse into the deeper psychology of the city. Regardless, I’d love to go back to LA and deeply explore the city, similar to how I did a trip to Northern California a couple years ago.

The Big Sleep is also foundational in American literature and film, influencing a hundred years of novels and impacting Hollywood deeply, even including the comedy film The Big Lebowski.

Should You Read The Big Sleep?

Absolutely, as I said–this is an American foundational work, that is rightly included on just about all Top 100 Novel lists; one of the pioneers in American detective fiction and developing a moral system for the mean streets.