The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep is a 1939 novel by Raymond Chandler, with two film versions, one filmed in 1945, and another filmed in 1978. It is the first novel to feature the detective Philip Marlowe, and is considered one of Chandler's greatest works, and one of the seminal works of hardboiled fiction. The story is infamously complex and hard to follow, with many characters all double-crossing and triple-crossing each other. ''Time'' magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The title is a euphemism for "death"; it refers to a rumination in the book about "sleeping the big sleep", and is not descriptive of the plot. Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the sprawling mansion of the elderly and infirm (paraplegic) General Sternwood. He asks Marlowe to deal with a blackmail named Arthur Gwynn Geiger, apparently a purveyor of rare books. Geiger is involved with the General's nymphomaniac daughter Carmen, and makes her sign promissory... full article at wikipedia