Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book

Hot Search

Philip Marlowe #1-3

The Big Sleep / Farewell, My Lovely / The High Window

raymond chandler

... Show More
Raymond Chandler’s first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction.
The Big Sleep , Chandler’s first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralyzed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder. In Farewell, My Lovely , Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women. In The High Window , Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in the tangled affairs of a dead coin collector.
In all three novels, Chandler’s hard-edged prose, colorful characters, vivid vernacular, and, above all, his enigmatic loner of a hero, enduringly establish his claim not only to the heights of his chosen genre but to the pantheon of literary art.
Featuring the iconic character that inspired the forthcoming film Marlowe , starring Liam Neeson.

696 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,1942
Series
Philip Marlowe
Places
los angeles california, 

This edition

Format
696 pages, Hardcover
Published
October 15, 2002 by Everyman's Library
ISBN
9780375415012
ASIN
0375415017
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Philip Marlowe

    Philip Marlowe

    Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep, published in 1939. Chandlers early short stories, published in pulp magazines like Black Mask and Dime Detective, featured ...

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for raymond chandler

raymond chandler

... Show More
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."

Readers also enjoyed

Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 35 votes)
5 stars
12(34%)
4 stars
12(34%)
3 stars
11(31%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
35 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
suzuminakahara
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
The Big Sleep: 3.5
Farewell, My Lovely: 4
The High Window: 4.5

Damn, this guy had a way with words. So stylish. His work feels so modern.

“The white moonlight was cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find.”
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
KrobCZ
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
The Big Sleep is required reading but not my favorite. Farewell, My Lovely is the most exciting but most outlandish. The High Window is the most realistic but not as exciting as the second.

All are good examples of classic PI stories, though certain passages will make the modern reader wince.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
megarock327
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
4.5 all together

The Big Sleep - 4
Farewell, My Lovely - 5
The High Window - 4.5
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
recycledrabbit
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
Read just the first novel of this collection, The Big Sleep. Enjoyed some of the language Chandler used and some of the plot twists but the noir mood/style just didn’t hold my attention for long stretches. Good, not great. Perhaps I’ll visit the supposedly superior Farewell, My Lovely at a later date.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
AnimeNoMajutsu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
The first time I had encountered anything that had developed around the personality & activites of Philip Marlowe, the emotions that had flooded my mind can be summarised as: "No, not Sherlock Holmes, but....". Not only is Marlowe's world light-years away from the Victorian London in terms of time, space, characters, thought-process, but he himself is as different from Holmes as it is possible to imagine. But nevertheless, there are traits in him (I hope you have already noticed that I am not describing the novels in this book, because they are literary accomplishments way beyond my limited reviewing capacity, and better persons have spent reams upon them) that make him the template for any modern detective. If you know him, and are interested in reading his classic cases, this book and its companion volume are the best possible options, since they are sturdier than the Library of America volumes, and you should associate a certain degree of elegant rusticity with Chandler's works, shouldn't you?
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Laplace_kun
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
I think the first 3 in the series gets pretty complicated. They stack up the bodies and being hit with black jacks.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Dokubachi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
Readers just starting out with Chandler (as I was, just last week!), should consider getting The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window. It's a nice hardcover collecting Chandler's first three novels, and it can be ordered online for relatively not much.

n  The Big Sleepn

Nice introduction to Philip Marlowe, and an interesting look at a by-gone era, when one could go to the drugstore to buy some whiskey & cigarettes and sit down for a cup of coffee & a smoke. No, seriously.

As for the story itself, with its multiple deaths & mysteries, intertwining threads and flawed characters, it's incredibly well-written in a minimalist style that manages to evoke the right tone & atmosphere. And the way everything ties together at the end? Wow. It's easy to see why this book is a classic. And this was Raymond Chandler's FIRST novel!

n  Farewell, My Lovelyn

I really, really liked this one! I don't know if that's what Raymond Chandler was going for, but I found it quite funny (the things Marlowe says, I tell you...). This is Chandler's second Marlowe book and, as good as the first one was ("The Big Sleep"), "Farewell My Lovely" is head and shoulders above it.

Just like in The Big Sleep, it's a very easy read, and it's a real treat to follow Marlowe around, seemingly without a purpose (even though you just know there's a method to his madness).

And just like in the first book, the mystery is wrapped up in the last 15-20 pages, and that's fine. The way Marlowe goes about it is very clever, it all makes sense, and you wonder why you didn't see it before, since the pieces of the puzzle were all there.

Of course I highly recommend this to absolutely anyone, but especially to fans of noir and detective stories.

n  The High Windown

Not quite as awesome as Farewell, My Lovely, "The High Window" is still a very good book, a taut mystery, with the unflappable Marlowe up to his usual sleuthing.

Next Philip Marlowe mystery: The Lady in the Lake.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
PatoMcBrain
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
Funny and very interesting use of language, but I found it hard to get past the stereotypes and sexism. By the time I got done with the third story, I couldn't remember the distinct plots and it all blurred together.
0 0 Reply
Leave a Review
You must be logged in to rate and post a review. Register an account to get started.