The Big Sleep and Other Novels

This omnibus volume gathers several of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels in one book, beginning with The Big Sleep. Set in and around Los Angeles, the stories follow a lone private detective who takes on cases for the wealthy and the desperate, and finds corruption beneath a sunny surface. Read together, they show Chandler's gift for wisecracking narration, vivid similes and moral weariness, and they offer a fine way into the founding books of American hardboiled crime fiction.