“The Big Sleep” by Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep is a classic of mystery, a classic of noir, and even a classic of American literature. Published in 1939, it’s the first novel in which author Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) featured his famous detective Philip Marlowe, and it set the stage for the Marlowe novels that followed. The novel was also the basis for the 1946 film of the same namestarring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. 

Marlowe, a private detective, is hired by ailing General Sternwood to find out why a blackmailer is asking for money concerning one of his daughters. Sternwood made in money in the Southern California oilfields; his estate even includes pumping well (tastefully hidden from view of the palatial house). His son-in-law also seems to have disappeared, but no one seems terribly concerned about it. Marlowe is told to stick to the blackmail request.

 

The private detective makes use of clues and his many contacts to track the blackmailer to what appears to be a rare and antique book shop but is a front for a lucrative pornography business. Marlowe soon finds himself sucked into the Los Angeles underworld of pornography, gambling, violence, missing witnesses, and the glamour that disguises all of it.

 

Raymond Chandler

Marlowe is a fascinating detective. An outstanding graduate of the hardboiled detective school, he uses his tough-guy, no-nonsense exterior to harbor democratic ideals and a desire for good to triumph. He’s often compelled to chase down a wrong that’s been done, even when his employer tells him not to. It often leads to another feature of the ambiguousness of the culture highlighted in The Big Sleep – where the good buys and bad guys frequently change places.

 

Chandler’s Philip Marlowe’s novels also include Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The High Window (1942), The Lady in the Lake (1943), The Little Sister (1949), The Long Goodbye (1953), and Playback (1958). He also worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, writing the scripts for such movies as Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia, and Strangers on a Train. Many of his short stories were published as collections. He died in 1959 at La Jolla, California. 

 

The Big Sleep is one of the milestones of American mystery fiction. It occasionally included descriptions and terms that were commonly used in the 1930s and 1940s but would cause many readers to wince today. But it’s a fascinating read, opening a window on life and culture in southern California at the time and giving us one of the great hardboiled detectives of American mystery fiction.

Related:

 

Dispatch No. 1: Raymond Chandler – Ameria Friedline at Dispatches to Jack.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Why conservatives should read more fiction – Daniel Pitt at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Sixties Never Happened – Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

 

Surrender town: An 1881 visit to Appomattox Court House – John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

 

Lifetime Reader – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Sloane Square, the Bloody Bridge and King’s Private Road – A London Inheritance.

Top photograph: A scene from the 1946 movie with Bogart and Bacall.

Reading "Chicago Lightning"

I’m reading a book of private detective stories, Chicago Lightning by Max Allan Collins, and I’m hooked by the second age of the author’s introduction. Collins and I grew up on the same kind of television fare – and the same love for detective and mystery stories.

I watched westerns as a child – programs like Gunsmoke, The Rifleman and Bonanza – but it was the detective and mystery shows that I loved. Peter Gunn. Dragnet. Perry Mason (my Southern Baptist grandmother adored Perry Mason novels). 77 Sunset Strip. Hawaiian Eye (remember Connie Stevens as Cricket?). Mike Hammer.

My reading followed similar lines. From Trixie Beldon and the Hardy Boys I moved on to mysteries with real murders by writers like Agatha Christie. In the 1970s, there was something of a renaissance for the hardboiled detective novels, with new editions of books from the 1930s and 1940s. I read all of Dashiell Hammett’s novels, like Red Harvest, The Continental Op, The Maltese falcon and The Thin Man. I read Raymond Chandler’s novels, too, but preferred the almost literary prose of Hammett. Than I discovered S.S. Van Dine and the Philo Vance mysteries.

I moved away for reading almost solely mysteries but never abandoned the genre. After an extended romance with science fiction, I went literary and read the Latin Americans – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda and others. For about 10 years I was the Latin American and Spanish fiction reviewer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I still read some today, and have a novel by Carlos Fuentes waiting on the shelf.

The Latins, interestingly enough, led me to a popular Spanish writer named Arturo Perez-Reverte, who has written a number of semi-literary mysteries that are wonderful stories. Lately he’s been producing the Captain Alatriste novels, set in the declining Spain of the 17^th century.

But I still enjoy mysteries. I’m tending to stick more in the Christian mystery category, more because few mainstream mystery novelists seem to have to get too graphic with sex and violence. And despite my love of mysteries, I do not like violence. I don’t like it in movies or on television (which tells you how many movies I see and how much television I watch).

I like a number of British mystery writers, like Colin Dexter of Inspector Morse fame and Ian Rankin, who’s written the Inspector Rebus novels. But these days most contemporary mysteries are police procedurals or something similar, which are fine but don’t have the flare of those old private detectives, the guys who are tough as nails, pack heat and aren’t afraid to use it.

I enjoyed the stories in Chicago Lightning. They contain a few graphic scenes, but the scens seem to fit the stories. The hero, Nate Heller, is cut from that same cloth that produced Sam Spade, Nick Charles and Philip Marlowe. These aren’t the “solve the puzzle guys” so much as the “get the truth even if you have to beat it out of them” guys.

As odd as this might sound, reading these stories reminds me of my father. He grew up in that period when Hammett and Chandler and all the rest were at the height of their powers. He read a lot of them, too. And the stories he told of his experiences in working in the East Texas oil fields and the Depression-era newspaper business had that same kind of flavor to them. Although I can’t recall any murders or serious crimes in his stories, except for one he told about his grandmother that became part of the family legend. Did she or didn’t she?

I think I hold that story in reserve. It might make an interesting historical short story.