The Big Sleep

She was the first thing I saw when I walked into the bookstore. Such a looker I damn near tripped over a stack of calf-high hardbacks set next to a stand of morning papers. "I'm sorry," she said. "We're not quite open yet." "That's okay," I told her. "Neither are my eyes." I could tell right away I......more

It is always a pleasure to revisit a good book and find it even better than you remember. But it is humbling to discover that what you once thought was its most obvious defect is instead one of its great strengths. That was my recent experience with Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. I had read it twi......more

No matter how many times I read Chandler's Big Sleep - and I wouldn't like to count how many - I am always startled by the masterly audacity of the opening lines. Four sentences is all it takes and we've got the time, the weather and where we're located; we know who's talking to us, what he's wearin......more

A killing reading! PAINT IT BLACK A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. That was the line that hook me when I watched the classic film adaptation, the one produced in 1946, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. While I loved the whole movie, that scene b......more