Novel: The Big Sleep

Overview
The Big Sleep introduces Philip Marlowe, a laconic, morally complex private detective working in 1930s Los Angeles. Hired by the elderly and ailing General Sternwood to handle a routine blackmail problem, Marlowe is drawn into a tangle of vice, secrets and murder that exposes the rot beneath the city's glittering façade. Raymond Chandler's sharp, atmospheric prose and hardboiled wit establish Marlowe as a listener, observer and reluctant moral agent who moves through a corrupt world with a personal code that is both cynical and stubbornly principled.
The novel combines a knotty plot with a strong sense of place, where smoky offices, decadent mansions and seedier underworld haunts sit side by side. Chandler layers crooked cops, small-time hustlers and powerful crooks around the Sternwood family's personal scandals, crafting a mystery that is as much about character and atmosphere as it is about clues and motives.

Plot
Marlowe is hired by General Sternwood to stop blackmail attempts against the general's wild younger daughter, Carmen. As Marlowe pursues leads he uncovers links to pornographic books, a sleazy bookseller named Arthur Geiger and a wider criminal network that includes gambling, extortion and a shadowy local gangster, Eddie Mars. Each discovery deepens the case instead of simplifying it, drawing Marlowe into confrontations, stakeouts and betrayals.
Murders and disappearances complicate the investigation, and Marlowe untangles threads that reveal how sex, money and power intersect in destructive ways. Encounters with the Sternwood daughters, Vivian, elegant and guarded, and Carmen, volatile and dangerous, force him to navigate shifting loyalties and hidden motives. The resolution is not a clean courtroom reveal but a morally ambiguous reckoning in which some truths come to light and other wrongs remain unsettled, reflecting the book's refusal of facile justice.

Main Characters
Philip Marlowe is narrating, wry and observant, combining toughness with a reluctant tenderness for the vulnerable. General Sternwood is wealthy, frail and bewildered by the world around him but insistent on keeping his family's affairs private. Vivian Sternwood Rutledge presents as cool, manipulative and protective of her sister, while Carmen epitomizes reckless youth and self-destructiveness. Eddie Mars is the local power broker whose calm exterior masks a dangerous capacity for violence; Arthur Geiger represents the seedier commerce feeding the scandal.
A supporting cast of small-time criminals, corrupt cops and hired goons populate Marlowe's world, each adding a facet to the social atmosphere Chandler explores. Relationships among these characters are complex and shifting, and Marlowe's interactions reveal more about him, his ethics, his nostalgia for decency, than any single solution to the case.

Themes and Style
Chandler's prose is lean, image-rich and frequently aphoristic, full of memorable similes and moral observation. The novel examines urban corruption, the commodification of sex, the decline of aristocratic pretensions and the tenuous nature of justice. Marlowe embodies a private moral center, a detective who refuses to be merely transactional and who gauges people by a personal if sometimes contradictory standard of honor.
The Big Sleep also explores the destructive consequences of unchecked desire and the ways wealth can insulate and damage. Chandler keeps the tone tough and fatalistic but threads it with humor and occasional tenderness, making the book both a gritty procedural and a study of character under pressure.

Legacy and Significance
As Chandler's first Philip Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep helped define the hardboiled detective novel and shaped later noir fiction. Its blend of dense plotting, evocative setting and philosophical edge made it a model for private-eye stories and secured Marlowe's place in literary and popular culture. The book's famous 1946 film adaptation further cemented its iconic status, though Chandler's prose and moral complexity remain the novel's lasting contribution to American letters.