Philip Marlowe

The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles, California and is noted for its complexity, with many characters double-crossing one another and many secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; it refers to a rumination in the final pages of the book about "sleeping the big sleep." In 1999, the book was voted ninety-sixth of Le Monde's "100 Books of the Century". In 2005, it was included in "TIME's List of the 100 Best Novels."

Chandler's 5th novel has Philip Marlowe going to Hollywood as he explores the underworld of glitter capital, trying to find a sweet young thing's missing brother.

Acclaimed crime writer Denise Mina is the first woman to recreate Raymond Chandler's infamous detective, Philip Marlowe, in this smart and atmospheric new authorized mystery that finds Marlowe on the hunt for a missing heiress-and up against a rival PI. It's early fall when a heatwave descends on Los Angeles. Private Detective Philip Marlowe is called to the Montgomery estate, an almost mythic place sitting high on top of Beverly Hills. Wealthy socialite Chrissie Montgomery is missing. Young, naïve, and set to inherit an enormous fortune, she's a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father and his sultry bottle-blonde girlfriend want her found before that happens. To make sure, they've got Anne Riordan, now head of her own all-female detective agency, on the case, too. The search for Chrissie takes the two investigators from the Montgomery mansion to the roughest neighborhoods of LA, through dive bars and boarding houses and out to Skid Row. And that's all before they find the body at The Brody Hotel. Who will get to Chrissie first? And what happens when a woman doesn't want to be found? In “The Second Murderer,” Denise Mina delivers a clever and timely new take on Philip Marlowe, as well as a propulsive, dark, and witty mystery all its own.