Best Philip Marlowe novel?

[Predator]

I want to buy one of Raymond Chandler's novels with Philip Marlowe. I was thinking of The Big Sleep, but does anyone else have a recommendation?

[Nate C.]

The Big Sleep will do fine.

But you're actually in luck.

Slam will be here any minute. Whatever he says, do. (on Golden Age Sci-Fi, too. He's really, really old.)

[Greg Hatcher]

Well, you want one to START with? "Trouble Is My Business" is a nice primer. Four collected Marlowe novelettes.

The Big Sleep is the first Marlowe novel, and it's pretty good. They all are. But my favorite is The Long Goodbye.

[CaptMagellan]

Reading them all, in order is cool. There actually is character progression within Marlowe that becomes apparent that way.

The Big Sleep is probably the most quintessential one. But I loved the Long Goodbye a lot. In some ways I think that one had the most subtext and pure artistry in it.

[Slam_Bradley]

I'm partial to The Little Sister.

However, Marlowe is one of those characters who does go through some significant character progression over the course of the novels. Consequently, there is a lot to be said about reading them in order.

While I like a lot of Chandler's short work they weren't originally Marlowe stories. Chandler had a number of detectives including Mallory, Carmady and John Dalmas (when they had names at all). When Marlowe hit it big and they went back to put out collections of his short work, the names were changed to Marlowe.

The Long Goodbye is almost unquestionably his best novel. It is by far his most ambitious and he was a fully mature writer. If you're only going to read one...this is the one.

If you're interested in working your way up to this one then definitely start with The Big Sleep. It is not a book without flaws. The plot is disjointed. There are a number of macguffins that are thrown in to move the plot along and it's clear that Chandler himself got lost a couple of times in the writing. But it is still a great read...incredibly atmospheric.

I really recommend to any hard-boiled detective fan making the journey from The Big Sleep to Playback (probably the weakest of the novels). It is quite a progression and it really illustrates the changes in both the genre and in America from 1939 to 1958.

[berk]

There seems to be a consensus among Marlowe fans here; I'm another one who's favourite is The Long Goodbye and who'd recommend starting with The Big Sleep and reading the series in order, for the same reasons Slam_Bradley already mentioned. All the books are must-reads IMO. If I had to rank them from memory, I'd probably, Farewell My Lovely would probably come in 3rd after the two above. I recently re-read The Big Sleep myself and intend to track down new editions of the others over the next few years so I can go through the entire series again.

By the way, did any of you Cahndler fans happen to read the first issue of Warren Ellis's Desolation Jones series? I almost got the impression that Ellis was paying tribute to the opening of the Big Sleep in that one, but the subsequent issues never seemed to follow up on it. Might have been coincidence, though.

[Tages]

"The Long Goodbye" is probably the best, but my personal favorite is "Lady in the Lake." It has what I think to be by far the saddest, most effective ending, and the last sentence is one of the most powerful I've ever read in any book, ever. But the most powerful emotional moment is in "The Little Sister," when you find out one of the characters isn't at all the person you thought s/he was, and Marlowe makes an absolute gutwrenching decision in reaction to it.