Sophia C. reviewed on 8/1/2011 + 289 more book reviews

I have to be careful not the conflate my feelings about the hardboiled genre and this example of it. Raymond Chandler's first novel, The Big Sleep, is undoubtedly a classic hardboiled detective story. Chandler introduces Philip Marlowe, the protagonist of several more novels, as a more fleshed-out and likable character than those in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, another recent read in this genre. Chandler's prose, while still succinct and edgy in a masculine manner, has more attitude. Although a new plot twist at the end of every chapter is standard, I felt there was a place in the middle where the plot could have resolved, and subsequent developments were merely to prolong the story. Nonetheless, I'm glad the list of 1001 books you must read before you die led me to The Big Sleep.

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