The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

 

I have been enlightened, I see was at least some of the fuss is about. Twisty as its reputation (and yeah, the chauffeur ...) but what really makes the novel work is the combination of Chandler's somewhat heightened language and Marlowe's attitude (which might well be Chandler's from what I know of his biography). It's not a perfect novel (that chauffeur ...) but it is a very, very good one--deep in the foundational structure of Noir and other related Twentieth Century genre fiction.