The Big Sleep (Classic bestseller)
The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles
The story is noted for its complexity, with characters double-crossing one another and secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; the final pages of the book refer to a rumination about “sleeping the big sleep”.
In 1999, the book was voted 96th of Le Monde and #39;s “100 Books of the Century”. In 2005, it was included in Time magazine and #39;s “List of the 100 Best Novels”.
ASIN : B086QX4Q88
Publisher : Aegitas
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : April 3, 2020
Language : English
File size : 1.3 MB
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 105 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-0369401229
Page Flip : Enabled
Part of series : Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Anniversary Edition
Reading age : 16 years and up
Best Sellers Rank: #8,846 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store) #60 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Kindle Store) #62 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Kindle Store) #68 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars (11,275) var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
Original price was: $18.00.$11.85Current price is: $11.85.
The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles
The story is noted for its complexity, with characters double-crossing one another and secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; the final pages of the book refer to a rumination about “sleeping the big sleep”.
In 1999, the book was voted 96th of Le Monde and #39;s “100 Books of the Century”. In 2005, it was included in Time magazine and #39;s “List of the 100 Best Novels”.
ASIN : B086QX4Q88
Publisher : Aegitas
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : April 3, 2020
Language : English
File size : 1.3 MB
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 105 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-0369401229
Page Flip : Enabled
Part of series : Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Anniversary Edition
Reading age : 16 years and up
Best Sellers Rank: #8,846 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store) #60 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Kindle Store) #62 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Kindle Store) #68 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars (11,275) var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
7 reviews for The Big Sleep (Classic bestseller)
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Original price was: $18.00.$11.85Current price is: $11.85.
Felipe Adan Lerma –
A classic, modern enough for the 21st century
Wow, didn’t realize there were so many paper editions and evidently even a dramatized digital version. For clarity, and looking inside my copy, this review is for a paper First Vintage/Black Lizard Edition, August 1992. I couldn’t find a matching cover to the couple dozen choices under the paperback versions, so I chose to post my review here.I did read a few 1 and 2 star reviews after I’d finished the book, and I can understand someone not caring for a particular style, but had a hard time, without concrete examples, imagining what was boring or outdated (other than a few terms: “buzzer pinned to the flap” – “slaty eyes” – “a six mover”). Nothing more than I find reading British books (I’m in Texas), and the Kindle app usually can get me a definition for the cultural variances pretty easily. And that might be a good reason to opt for a digital version, though I personally would want to avoid any “dramatized” versions the reviews bring up. I feel I probably read the author’s original intent in my edition.The descriptive atmosphere was sparing but, I thought, extremely effectively used. “Seaward a few gulls wheeled and swooped over something in the surf and far out a white yacht looked as if it was hanging in the sky.” – “A nasty building. A building in which the smell of stale cigar butts would be the cleanest odor.”Which brings me to two other things I really liked about Raymond Chandler’s writing: sentence variation and a wry sense of self humor.I had been under the mistaken impression that Chandler mostly or even only used short sentences. In fact his has quite a variety, including the use of complex compound sentences followed by short fragments. The effect is stimulating and powerful:”I came out at a service station glaring with wasted light, where a bored attendant in a white cap and a dark blue windbreaker sat hunched on a stool, inside the steamed glass, reading a paper. I started in, then kept going. I was as wet as I could get already. And on a night like that you can grow a beard waiting for a taxi. And taxi drivers remember.”The humor, I felt, was subtle. Enjoyed it tremendously.There’s much more I could mention, pro and con, the well developed slowly evolving plot, the relationships and attitudes among the women and men, and lack of hispanics, blacks, or other ethnic groups (descriptive of the times) – but I’ll end with Raymond’s figurative use of language.I think the first contemporary author I became acutely aware of in their use of metaphors and similes was James Patterson in Zoo. In my review of Zoo, I mentioned how well they worked, most of the time, but occasionally seemed to veer off as not fitting the tone of the passage.I don’t feel this is the case at all in The Big Sleep. The similes and metaphors are well spaced through-out from beginning to end. Appearing a bit more frequently during times of tension or mystery. And never, to my reading, out of place or jarring from the story:”Another man sat at the corner of the desk in a blue leather chair, a cold-eyed hatchet-faced man, as lean as a rake and as hard as the manager of a loan office.” – “I pushed a flat tin of cigarettes at him. His small neat fingers speared one like a trout taking the fly.” – “Her very blue eyes flashed so sharply that I could almost see the sweep of their glance, like the sweep of sword.”For me, this is top flight quality writing that entertains.About as pure a 5 Star as I can give.
Gary Griffiths –
“Tough Like Some Guys Think They Are Tough”
Before Jim Thompson’s nihilistic, tough guy crime fiction, and long before smart-talking private detectives like Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole or Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie, there was Raymond Chandler and his prototype hard boiled PI, Phillip Marlowe. While Hammett’s Sam Spade pre-dates Marlowe’s 1939 debut here in “The Big Sleep”, Chandler – through Marlowe – is arguably the standard by which all others are measured, the author who could credibly lay claim as the master of the irreverent maverick sleuth: the fast-fisted, impossibly clever, dame-magnet which so many have since sought to emulate. Less debatable is Chandler’s mastery the style and the elegance of prose that he introduced to pulp fiction – sharp and lean as one would expect of the genre, but rich in simile and image and as readable today as it was nearly seven decades ago.In “The Big Sleep”, in what looks like a routine case, Marlowe is summoned by a fatally ill millionaire to track down a blackmailer holding compromising pictures of one of his two wayward adult daughters. Chandler gets right to the point in spinning a tale of thugs and hit men trading in pornography and gambling, leading to more murders than a Mel Gibson movie and dalliances sleazy enough to make Bill Clinton blush. Still, while the violence and sex is quaint by today’s no-holds-barred onslaught, it is no less effective – consider the terror of the shower screen in Hitchcock’s brilliant “Psycho” – one of film’s most disturbing moments, though the knife is never seen striking flesh.In fairness, “The Big Sleep” is not Chandler’s finest moment. The initial transgression seems neatly wrapped up with nearly half of the book to go, and one wonders what Marlowe is doing as he aimlessly kicks around what seem to be meaningless loose ends in a rather muddled middle of the book. But Chandler’s craft keeps the reader engaged, wrapping up with a few clever twists and enough (barely) of the irony these early masters of pulp fiction are so well noted for.If you’re a fan of pop crime fiction and haven’t gone back to read Chandler (or Thompson, Hammett, Block, Westlake, McBain…), you’ve got some real treats ahead of you. Great entertainment, while at the same time a peak into the roots and inspiration for so many of today’s best crime writers.
Gayle Shaw –
The introduction of Philip Marlowe to the world, a flawed but fundamentally decent man. Oh and did I mention one of the drollest narrators ever . Nice edition.
Matt Jenkins –
“Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.”–from the back coverThe Big Sleep is the first of Raymond Chandler’s novels featuring the definitive hardboiled PI Philip Marlowe. Having been asked by General Sternwood to deal with a blackmailer, Marlowe enters the world of gangsters, femmes fatale, pornography, blackmail and murder, in this classic noir novel. Chandler’s writing is descriptive and evocative but also humorous. Indeed, Chandler’s prose is what makes the Marlowe novels something special.”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.”–Robert B. Parker, The New York Times Book Review”Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye.”–Los Angeles Times”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 BooksFor those who like Chandler’s ‘Marlowe’ books the following is a list of his works:The Big Sleep (1939)Farewell, My Lovely (1940)The High Window: A Philip Marlowe Mystery (1942)The Lady in the Lake (A Philip Marlowe Novel) (1943)The Little Sister: A Philip Marlowe Mystery (1949)The Long Good-bye (1953)Playback (1958)Trouble is My Business (a collection of short stories featuring Philip Marlowe. Originally published before The Big Sleep between 1934-1939)Also available is the classic movie starring Humphrey Bogart The Big Sleep [1946] [DVD] and an audio book version The Big Sleep (Classic Chandler).
Mario Manus –
The product looks perfect
Amazon Customer –
Great book, most of all because of the great dialogues and characters.Even if it was written more than 80 years ago, it’s still actual.
Jose –
chato