Philip Marlowe is the most likably prototypical of hard-boiled detectives -- he's good in a fight, keeps running into thugs, and always has a quip ready. And he's the ideal protagonist for the very first novel by Raymond Chandler, "The Big Sleep." This book is a glorious example of the hard-boiled mystery -- a complicated web of blackmail, money, sexuality and secrets that only a too-tall detective can unravel (well, mostly). While a bit hard to follow in places, the book is a thoroughly entertaining experience. 
 Marlowe is hired by the elderly, crippled General Sternwood to handle a blackmail case involving his younger daughter Carmen (and he's also accosted by elder daughter Vivian). He quickly figures out that the blackmailer Arthur Geiger is a professional pornographer, but the case suddenly gets more complex when Marlowe finds Carmen naked and drugged at Geiger's house -- and Geiger is dead, the nude photos he took of her are gone, and two cars left the scene just as Geiger was killed. Whatta mess. 
 But Geiger's death hasn't stopped the blackmail, since the photos taken from his house are being used to blackmail the Sternwood family anew. And Marlowe quickly discovers that the death of Geiger is just the tip of the iceberg, as he navigates a web of mysterious deaths, nude pictures, double-crosses, lies, gun-toting rich brats, secret lovers and Vivian's missing husband Rusty Regan. Only quick wits and a quicker tongue can keep him ahead of his foes. 
 "The Big Sleep" was only Chandler's first full-length work of fiction, but even this rougher work shows the considerable talent he had. One of those talents was that he could write a very complex, sometimes difficult-to-follow tale of detection, and make the journey more important than the destination -- half the joy of "The Big Sleep" is simply the experience of gliding along on Chandler's prose, enjoying the scenes of guns, crime scenes, squabbling with cops and trolling women in bookstores. 
 His writing is rough and plain, like most hard-boiled mysteries, but there are some descriptions that glimmer with color and bright, sharp incisiveness (Carmen Sternwood is usually described almost like an animal, with tiny glinting teeth and a mile-wide vicious streak). He also included some wit and cleverness that lightens up the rather dark storyline, mostly provided by the ever-snarky Marlowe ("You'll never find either of them. The Pacific Ocean is too close"). 
 Problems? Well, Chandler has a tendency to use too many "ands" whenever the characters do several things in succession, there are some rather offensive terms for an LGBT person, and... well, it pains me to critique a master, but he also forgot to finish off one of the plot threads, namely the mysterious death of a minor character. 
 But Marlowe is the kind of character that most people writing some kind of hardboiled mystery try -- and usually fail -- to write. He's clever, just smart enough to dance a few steps ahead of the people around him, and able to walk the tightrope between the lawless private eye and someone who has to answer to the cops. He's also pretty funny without ever losing the sense that he's taking everything around himself deadly seriously, just that he refuses to be drawn too far into other people's schemes. 
 "The Big Sleep" is a big triumph -- a hardboiled mystery that perfectly balances the guns and the witty retorts, the dames and the deaths. Had Chandler not made a few freshman screwups, it would have been the perfect example of the genre.