Longer ago than I care to admit, I worked at a B. Dalton bookstore. The manager (Hi, Tim!) was somewhat unusual in that he cared far more about books and customer satisfaction than he did about advancing up the ranks within the Dayton-Hudson Corp. Anyway, he once told me something to the effect that “Chandler will be recognized as a great writer of his generation long after Hemmingway’s social significance has dimmed.” History will be the only judge of that prediction, but I think it’ll probably prove correct.

It’s been at least a decade since I’ve picked up Chandler and thrilled to the life and times of Philip Marlowe, Private Detective. I’d forgotten what fine novels they are.

Marlowe is, or has become, the prototypical American private eye: tough, rough around the edges, disarmingly honest, cool with the ladies, starkly lonely. The Big Sleep is Chandler’s first Marlowe story, and we meet him in Chandler’s stark romanticised prose: “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it.”

Marlowe’s beat is the Los Angeles and Hollywood of the late 1930s and early 40s. The southland was growing rapidly, losing its provincial feel as it struggled in the process of becoming a big city. Pasadena was still the end of the world, but the orange groves were starting to fall to industry and what would become Los Angeles’ legacy: suburban sprawl. Chandler loves the old city, and Marlowe is its literary ghost, haunting us with mystery and romance, death and lost love.