The Big Sleep

"*Actual rating ⭐⭐⭐.7 & 1/2."

"DNF...I struggled to get into this, probably because the "hard boiled detective" genre has never appealed to me. Some people like the grittiness, but it doesn't strike a chord with me. I can still appreciate this for it's contribution to the crime genre though!"

"So many scenes of a woman hissing. Literally hissing.<br/><br/>Chandler's Marlowe has a keen wit and you can feel the glamour here, but so many characters go from 0 to 100 in a blink that you become immune to whatever this tried to do.<br/><br/>Hiss."

"Being Raymond Chandler's first-ever novel, The Big Sleep is a surprisingly skillful blend of hard-boiled crime fiction and literary stylism. The plot, characters, and tone are fairly typical of the detective stories from the early to mid 20th century, and the tough-guy dialogue and dated phrases give one a nostalgia for a time long past. (True, some of the dated nature of Chandler's books present instances of political incorrectness, but I find them easy enough to understand and get past). Phillip Marlowe's voice is witty, cynical, and sleuth-y. However, on top of these fun, but mostly unremarkable elements, there are moments sprinkled throughout the work reminiscent of literary classics published around the same time. Every once in a while, a description, an inner dialogue, a philosophical digression is conveyed with impressive prowess. True, this is a first-class pick for a cliché crime read, but don't regard it as nothing more than that."

"A classic that started the entire "hard boiled detective" genre, I have been wanting to read this one for awhile. It was hard to get into at first. Because I think it started an entire genre, and I am reading it at a time where that genre has already become both mainstream and subsequently satirized, it was hard for me not to laugh at a lot of the dialogue and some of the stereotypical characters and tropes that appeared. I kept imagining a 1940s gangster movie in my head the entire time. I did enjoy it by the end though. I think the descriptions of LA and the atmosphere of the book was fantastic. There are depictions in here from 1939 that the modern reader is going to find misogynistic, racist, homophobic, etc. Overall, I did find it interesting and worth my time as a historical and literary read."

"Hmm not sure"

"I'm not sure I hadn't really thought about it! I thought the chapter where he first meets the Sternwoods was great in the way it established so much of the mystery"