No rest for the wicked

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

 

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But 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 . . .

One of those I can’t believe I’d never read it before books. It’s stylish, intelligent and really rather dark. A genre-defining classic and cited by just about every crime writer ever as a source of inspiration. Feel really rather guilty therefore that I just didn’t enjoy it that much. I will have to let the dust settle on this LA noir and try again at some point.