The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"It was about ten-thirty in the morning when the little yellow-sashed Mexican orchestra got tired of playing a low-voiced prettied-up rhumba that nobody was dancing to."

This is probably my favourite book, Raymond Chandler certainly my favourite author. Recently, belatedly discovering James Crumley sent me back here. It has been a few years since I read the Marlowe novels, and I intend to read them all again. Chandler took what other "hard-boiled' pulp storytellers, particularly Dashiell Hamnett, were doing and made it an art-form, the template followed by Ross & John MacDonald, James Crumley, Robert B. Parker, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and John Connolly, Ace Atkins, and so many other writers I have come to love. Marlowe affected me so much, my first son is named Philip - "Down These Mean Streets..."

This time I read my lovely, Bill Amberg leather-bound, Penguin Classic which made the book a joy to hold as well as to read. It was fun reacquainting myself with the Sternwoods, Geiger and Brody, Bernie Ohls and Eddie Mars and wondering who killed the chauffeur... But, it's the language that matters. Open the book to any chapter, any page, and passages like that with which this review begins appear. It's like re-listening to favourite music and finding an organ line in the mix that hadn't been immediately apparent. I love the tune and, what lyrics.....

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