The Big Sleep

By: Raymond Chandler, Ian Rankin - introduction

Narrated by: Scott Brick

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

© Raymond Chandler 1988 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Critic reviews

Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious (Robert B. Parker)

Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since (Paul Auster)

Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude (Erle Stanley Gardner)

[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision

(Joyce Carol Oates)

Raymond Chandler is a master

Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye

Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . A great artist

Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from the first sentence

A razor-sharp noir classic — unforgettable characters and atmosphere

I absolutely loved The Big Sleep. The characters are brilliantly crafted — layered, unpredictable, and morally complex. Philip Marlowe is an outstanding detective: sharp, calm, and a true gentleman, though it’s clear that in the gritty world he moves through, it’s not easy to stay that way.

What really got me was the authentic noir feel — the neon signs, the fog creeping through quiet streets, the smoky interiors, and the way each twist kept raising the stakes. Every scene pulled me deeper into the mood.

It’s stylish, clever, atmospheric — and just incredibly cool. A true classic. I’ll definitely continue the series.