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The Big Sleep,The Debut of Philip Marlowe
Welcome to sunny L.A. It's sunny unless you're caught without an umbrella or you're dead.
It's 1939. A lot of people don't know it, but in a couple of years, a lot of girls and boys are going to take the big sleep, courtesy of, if you want to call them men, Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini. Now there's an axis of evil. It's something called World War II. Forget about that "War to end all wars" stuff.
Me, I wasn't born yet. After I was more than a glint in Mom's and Pop's eyes, I grew up, became a lawyer and fought crime and sought justice for twenty-eight years as an Assistant D.A. When I started out and went out with the law, make that with a capital L, I didn't have a gun or a badge. The D.A. finally issued us badges, but whether we got a gun, was up to us. You don't get rich working for the State. I carried a Walther .380. Sometimes, I needed one. But I never had to use it. Showing it once, was enough. I still have it, though.
I've seen more dead bodies than some morticians. They aren't pretty. Murder in my world was in 3-D and Technicolor. I saw it and smelled it. What they say about Vick's, it works a while. Then the smell of sweet rot soaks into your clothes. It gets in your hair, too. I shaved my mustache after a bad floater. You want a real experience, be there when they pop the top on a coffin on an exhumation order. I'll take cremation any day. My crime world was black and white only at night, when the Maglites were the only thing to light a place up--that and a strobe flash. Then you'd get a splash of color here and there, kind of like that little girl's red coat in Schindler's List.
By the time I got home, I didn't need to read about crime, much less want to. So, I didn't. I'd read my share of mysteries before I went to law school. The nice, neat kind. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers. Tossed in some Ngaio MarshNgaio Marsh The closest I got to P.I.s was Nero Wolfe by Rex Stout and Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle.
I saw Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum in "The Big Sleep. I liked the movies, liked the actors. I'll watch anything with either of them in it, more than once, and have. But, Raymond Chandler? Never read him. Until now.
That's the thing about being in a good book group, like "Pulp Fiction," a rag tag group of noire and hard-boiled crime fiends. They'll get you to read something you wouldn't take a second glace at, strolling through a bookstore. One of the moderators is a lady with a cattle prod. She's not afraid to use it.
I caved in. Resistance was futile. "What? You've never read Raymond Chandler?" The word "cretin" is left unsaid, but the implication is clear. Chandler, you say? I got Chandler, one of those Library of America editions I thought I'd told them never to send me. I walked over to the shelf. Damn. It was his later works. The Big Sleep was in the volume I didn't have. From the tone of this group, I figured I'd be reading more Chandler. So, off to Amazon, search, and one click, it's on the way. It was relatively painless.
The postman rang twice at the door a couple of days later. It was raining. He was a nice postman. He left it on the porch in the dry out front.
I have too many women in my life. It's complicated. There's the wife, my mother, one pup named Tilley. She's part Jack Russell, wire-haired, and shiatsu. As the vet said, "What you have here is a gen-u-ine "Jack S..., and if anyone ever tells you, you don't know Jack, just introduce 'em to your dog." I enjoy doing that. There's a bunch of defense lawyers thought I didn't. I send their clients Christmas cards to the State Pen. Each year.
There's one other fellow in the house besides me. Pepe, the supposed chihuahua, who weighs in around fourteen pounds. I told the Mum somebody forged his papers. At any rate, we're out numbered. He's not much help. The Mum "fixed" him when he was just a tyke. I don't think he's ever forgiven her. I wouldn't either.
The book came in on December 23. I cracked the seal on a bottle of Gentleman Jack, had a stout one on the rocks, and began to read. I took my cigarettes, booze, and Tilley, the Jack S... to the screened porch. It was warm for this time of year. Soon I was sippin' Gentleman, blowing smoke rings up to the ceiling fan and flipping pages so fast I didn't even feel the blister on my flipping finger.
In my real world, I don't care too much for P.I.s. Excluding a few former retired F.B.I.types in their black squeaky wing-tipped shoes and retired law enforcement officers, the P.I.s I've known were a sleazy lot in a sleazy business. I prosecuted a few of them for impersonating a law enforcement officer. It's amazing what you can get from a McClain's Catalog for Law Enforcement. Those badges look like the real thing. But they're not.
Marlowe's in the exclusive group that is the rare exception to the rule. He was an Investigator for the L.A. District Attorney. He's still connected there, Investigator Bernie Ohls, a friend and source of information. Ohl's will tip Marlowe to a case. In the business, Ohl's is a good man to know, especially when you only charge $25.00 a day plus expenses. Ohl's tips Marlowe that General Sternwood who's worth three and a half million big ones is needing help.
Sternwood is old L.A. money. His estate home leaves no question about that. It's good Marlowe wore his best suit and had diamond designs on his argyles when he came to call.
Not only is he old money, the General is old. He's sick and looks as if he's going to be taking the big sleep soon. It may be hot in L.A., but the General is cold. Marlowe meets him in a greenhouse that is a humid, hot glass room full of orchids. It's too hot, but Marlowe doesn't argue about it.
Somebody's put the touch on the General for big dollars. He's got two daughters who like life on the wild side. Marlowe's job is to put the quietus on the black mail. It's happened more than once. The General's not happy. He also mentions his son-i-law of whom he's quite fond is missing. But he doesn't ask that Marlowe find him. Marlowe's got it pegged this blackmail job is a test. Marlowe takes the job as asked. The General could handle the freight, but Marlowe's got his code of ethics. The cost of the service is the same, even if you're as rich as Croesus.
Before leaving the prestigious address, Marlowe meets the General's daughters. Vivian is long, svelte, lithe, and curved in all the right places. She wants to know why Daddy has hired Marlowe. Marlowe's not talking. He strictly keeps his client's requests confidential. That doesn't please Viv, who is obviously a woman who generally gets what she wants from a man. You can just tell it. But not Marlowe.
Daddy's second little darling is a cute little kitten named Carmen who bats her eyes like a coy little child with that little curl in the middle of her forehead that indicates she can be truly horrid. Tell her no, she's going to pout and stomp her foot. She think's Marlowe's cute. Marlowe thinks she's cute, too. But he's not playing with that kitten. He knows better.
Faster than you can say gat, the body count starts to mount. Chandler's deaths are quick and clean. There's not a whole lot of gore to it. A few quick pops from a gat--that's a gun to you rookies, and a body hits the floor.
Seems there's an exclusive lending library operated by a man named Geiger. He lends out books of smut to a list of exclusive customers whose names he keeps encoded in a book.
A fella named Joe Brody wants to take over the smut business. His love interest works for Geiger.
There's another young man in a green jerkin that works for Geiger who's awfully upset when Geiger doesn't show up for work at their little bookstore.
The Sternwood family chauffeur drives off the end of Lido Pier about thirty miles outside of LA. It looks as if somebody sapped him. Was it murder or suicide.
Then there's the gray man, Eddie Mars, who's operating a casino, openly protected by the local cops. Mars has got his fingers in a lot of pies, most of which have nasty ingredients.
Marlowe is always in the middle of things as the bodies stack higher and higher. He's playing his cards close to the vest. He's not even tipping his old friend Ohls until he knows the whole story. Wiles, the DA isn't happy that Marlowe's being stingy with the scoop. However, a man after my own heart, the DA looks the other way because he recognizes an honest man when he sees one. Never doubt that Marlowe is honest. He may not tell you everything he knows, but he's not going to tell you a lie. Bluff? Maybe. Lie? No. Let's just say he may omit what he considers to be an immaterial detail.
After the blackmail angle is resolved, the General does want to know where his son-in-law is. Marlowe takes the job. And Marlowe finds Regan, the old man's friend who kept him company when his own daughters wouldn't.
Good? You bet it is. Right down to the last page. There are hints of who Marlowe will become. We're barely getting to know him in his debut. But we do know he won't take money for a job he's not satisfied with his results. He plays chess, by himself, solving complex chess problems. He's tough. He can be violent, but only when forced to that point. He likes a good looking woman, but knows better than to play with the wrong one. He's a man never at a loss for words, who doesn't mind telling you what you don't want to hear, or refusing to tell what you don't need to know. He likes a good smoke and a good drink. He works alone. He has no secretary. He doesn't need one. Every indication is that this tough shamus with a bent for honesty and honor will be the knight of Sunset Boulevard.
By my reckoning, with the complete Chandler on my shelves now, I've got about 2,400 more pages of good reading ahead of me. Mr. Chandler, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Welcome to sunny L.A. It's sunny unless you're caught without an umbrella or you're dead.
It's 1939. A lot of people don't know it, but in a couple of years, a lot of girls and boys are going to take the big sleep, courtesy of, if you want to call them men, Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini. Now there's an axis of evil. It's something called World War II. Forget about that "War to end all wars" stuff.
Me, I wasn't born yet. After I was more than a glint in Mom's and Pop's eyes, I grew up, became a lawyer and fought crime and sought justice for twenty-eight years as an Assistant D.A. When I started out and went out with the law, make that with a capital L, I didn't have a gun or a badge. The D.A. finally issued us badges, but whether we got a gun, was up to us. You don't get rich working for the State. I carried a Walther .380. Sometimes, I needed one. But I never had to use it. Showing it once, was enough. I still have it, though.
I've seen more dead bodies than some morticians. They aren't pretty. Murder in my world was in 3-D and Technicolor. I saw it and smelled it. What they say about Vick's, it works a while. Then the smell of sweet rot soaks into your clothes. It gets in your hair, too. I shaved my mustache after a bad floater. You want a real experience, be there when they pop the top on a coffin on an exhumation order. I'll take cremation any day. My crime world was black and white only at night, when the Maglites were the only thing to light a place up--that and a strobe flash. Then you'd get a splash of color here and there, kind of like that little girl's red coat in Schindler's List.
By the time I got home, I didn't need to read about crime, much less want to. So, I didn't. I'd read my share of mysteries before I went to law school. The nice, neat kind. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers. Tossed in some Ngaio MarshNgaio Marsh The closest I got to P.I.s was Nero Wolfe by Rex Stout and Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle.
I saw Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum in "The Big Sleep. I liked the movies, liked the actors. I'll watch anything with either of them in it, more than once, and have. But, Raymond Chandler? Never read him. Until now.
That's the thing about being in a good book group, like "Pulp Fiction," a rag tag group of noire and hard-boiled crime fiends. They'll get you to read something you wouldn't take a second glace at, strolling through a bookstore. One of the moderators is a lady with a cattle prod. She's not afraid to use it.
I caved in. Resistance was futile. "What? You've never read Raymond Chandler?" The word "cretin" is left unsaid, but the implication is clear. Chandler, you say? I got Chandler, one of those Library of America editions I thought I'd told them never to send me. I walked over to the shelf. Damn. It was his later works. The Big Sleep was in the volume I didn't have. From the tone of this group, I figured I'd be reading more Chandler. So, off to Amazon, search, and one click, it's on the way. It was relatively painless.
The postman rang twice at the door a couple of days later. It was raining. He was a nice postman. He left it on the porch in the dry out front.
I have too many women in my life. It's complicated. There's the wife, my mother, one pup named Tilley. She's part Jack Russell, wire-haired, and shiatsu. As the vet said, "What you have here is a gen-u-ine "Jack S..., and if anyone ever tells you, you don't know Jack, just introduce 'em to your dog." I enjoy doing that. There's a bunch of defense lawyers thought I didn't. I send their clients Christmas cards to the State Pen. Each year.
There's one other fellow in the house besides me. Pepe, the supposed chihuahua, who weighs in around fourteen pounds. I told the Mum somebody forged his papers. At any rate, we're out numbered. He's not much help. The Mum "fixed" him when he was just a tyke. I don't think he's ever forgiven her. I wouldn't either.
The book came in on December 23. I cracked the seal on a bottle of Gentleman Jack, had a stout one on the rocks, and began to read. I took my cigarettes, booze, and Tilley, the Jack S... to the screened porch. It was warm for this time of year. Soon I was sippin' Gentleman, blowing smoke rings up to the ceiling fan and flipping pages so fast I didn't even feel the blister on my flipping finger.
In my real world, I don't care too much for P.I.s. Excluding a few former retired F.B.I.types in their black squeaky wing-tipped shoes and retired law enforcement officers, the P.I.s I've known were a sleazy lot in a sleazy business. I prosecuted a few of them for impersonating a law enforcement officer. It's amazing what you can get from a McClain's Catalog for Law Enforcement. Those badges look like the real thing. But they're not.
Marlowe's in the exclusive group that is the rare exception to the rule. He was an Investigator for the L.A. District Attorney. He's still connected there, Investigator Bernie Ohls, a friend and source of information. Ohl's will tip Marlowe to a case. In the business, Ohl's is a good man to know, especially when you only charge $25.00 a day plus expenses. Ohl's tips Marlowe that General Sternwood who's worth three and a half million big ones is needing help.
Sternwood is old L.A. money. His estate home leaves no question about that. It's good Marlowe wore his best suit and had diamond designs on his argyles when he came to call.
Not only is he old money, the General is old. He's sick and looks as if he's going to be taking the big sleep soon. It may be hot in L.A., but the General is cold. Marlowe meets him in a greenhouse that is a humid, hot glass room full of orchids. It's too hot, but Marlowe doesn't argue about it.
Somebody's put the touch on the General for big dollars. He's got two daughters who like life on the wild side. Marlowe's job is to put the quietus on the black mail. It's happened more than once. The General's not happy. He also mentions his son-i-law of whom he's quite fond is missing. But he doesn't ask that Marlowe find him. Marlowe's got it pegged this blackmail job is a test. Marlowe takes the job as asked. The General could handle the freight, but Marlowe's got his code of ethics. The cost of the service is the same, even if you're as rich as Croesus.
Before leaving the prestigious address, Marlowe meets the General's daughters. Vivian is long, svelte, lithe, and curved in all the right places. She wants to know why Daddy has hired Marlowe. Marlowe's not talking. He strictly keeps his client's requests confidential. That doesn't please Viv, who is obviously a woman who generally gets what she wants from a man. You can just tell it. But not Marlowe.
Daddy's second little darling is a cute little kitten named Carmen who bats her eyes like a coy little child with that little curl in the middle of her forehead that indicates she can be truly horrid. Tell her no, she's going to pout and stomp her foot. She think's Marlowe's cute. Marlowe thinks she's cute, too. But he's not playing with that kitten. He knows better.
Faster than you can say gat, the body count starts to mount. Chandler's deaths are quick and clean. There's not a whole lot of gore to it. A few quick pops from a gat--that's a gun to you rookies, and a body hits the floor.
Seems there's an exclusive lending library operated by a man named Geiger. He lends out books of smut to a list of exclusive customers whose names he keeps encoded in a book.
A fella named Joe Brody wants to take over the smut business. His love interest works for Geiger.
There's another young man in a green jerkin that works for Geiger who's awfully upset when Geiger doesn't show up for work at their little bookstore.
The Sternwood family chauffeur drives off the end of Lido Pier about thirty miles outside of LA. It looks as if somebody sapped him. Was it murder or suicide.
Then there's the gray man, Eddie Mars, who's operating a casino, openly protected by the local cops. Mars has got his fingers in a lot of pies, most of which have nasty ingredients.
Marlowe is always in the middle of things as the bodies stack higher and higher. He's playing his cards close to the vest. He's not even tipping his old friend Ohls until he knows the whole story. Wiles, the DA isn't happy that Marlowe's being stingy with the scoop. However, a man after my own heart, the DA looks the other way because he recognizes an honest man when he sees one. Never doubt that Marlowe is honest. He may not tell you everything he knows, but he's not going to tell you a lie. Bluff? Maybe. Lie? No. Let's just say he may omit what he considers to be an immaterial detail.
After the blackmail angle is resolved, the General does want to know where his son-in-law is. Marlowe takes the job. And Marlowe finds Regan, the old man's friend who kept him company when his own daughters wouldn't.
Good? You bet it is. Right down to the last page. There are hints of who Marlowe will become. We're barely getting to know him in his debut. But we do know he won't take money for a job he's not satisfied with his results. He plays chess, by himself, solving complex chess problems. He's tough. He can be violent, but only when forced to that point. He likes a good looking woman, but knows better than to play with the wrong one. He's a man never at a loss for words, who doesn't mind telling you what you don't want to hear, or refusing to tell what you don't need to know. He likes a good smoke and a good drink. He works alone. He has no secretary. He doesn't need one. Every indication is that this tough shamus with a bent for honesty and honor will be the knight of Sunset Boulevard.
By my reckoning, with the complete Chandler on my shelves now, I've got about 2,400 more pages of good reading ahead of me. Mr. Chandler, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
