Raymond Chandler’s first Philip Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939.
The novel introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective hired by the wealthy General Sternwood to deal with a blackmailer targeting his younger daughter. The assignment soon becomes more complicated, involving disappearance, gambling, murder and competing criminal interests.
The Big Sleep was Chandler’s first published novel, but Marlowe’s voice developed from earlier stories featuring detectives such as John Dalmas and Carmady. Chandler reworked material from those stories, a method sometimes called “cannibalizing” earlier fiction.
Howard Hawks directed the 1946 film adaptation, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The film helped make Marlowe a defining screen image of the private-eye genre, but the character’s literary origin is Chandler’s 1939 novel. The book’s intricate plot has also become famous for an unresolved point of narrative logic.