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The Big Sleep

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The Big Sleep

By: Raymond Chandler, Ian Rankin
Narrated by: Scott Brick
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.'

Los Angeles Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wheelchair-bound General Sternwood to discover who is blackmailing him. A broken, weary old man, Sternwood just wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. However, with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out. And that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.

The Big Sleep is Raymond Chandler's first novel featuring laconic PI Philip Marlowe.

'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times

'Chandler grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph

'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times

'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess

©2020 Raymond Chandler (P)2020 Penguin Audio Classics Modern Detectives Mystery Private Investigators Suspense Thriller & Suspense Detective Fiction

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All stars
Most relevant
the ultimate. The narration really does add value and bring the story into being. Could not recommend more 👍

Excellent detective noire story. Quite possibly

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See above, I don’t like to waste words. Blubber, pants, prosthetic, harmonica, haemolytic. I needed 15 words.

The turn of phrase, such great lines. Ridiculous plot, really, but still great.

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A good story that still holds up today. The narrator isn’t the best at distinguishing character voices, so it can be a bit confusing when there are more than two people in a scene.

Pretty damn good

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Given the intricate plot and host of characters, this is a tad difficult to follow in audio format and I look forward to giving the print version and film adaptation a whirl. I still enjoyed it overall though and will look to see how Marlowe gets on in his following capers.

Hard boiled as it gets

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Loved the prose, plot, and characters. Truly enjoyable book, that moves along at a pace. The narration was excellent too, exactly the voice that you'd want for this genre.

My introduction to Raymond Chandler

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