THE FOLIO SOCIETY

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts

When the oil millionaire General Sternwood finds out his daughter is being blackmailed over some compromising photographs, he hires Philip Marlowe, a street-wise detective with his own sense of honour. But finding the blackmailer turns out to be just the start. Before long two men are dead and Marlowe himself is in desperate danger. When Chandler wrote The Big Sleep in 1938, he had already made his name as a short story crime writer in the new American 'hardboiled' style with a great line in snappy dialogue. This, his first novel, became the ultimate 'noir' mystery.