Summary of "The Big Sleep"

This is a captivating story about a detective, Philip Marlowe, who is basically a quintessential knight errant. The reader is first introduced to him as he is entering the Sternwood mansion and is about to be hired by General Sternwood. The introduction is mesmeric, "The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel …

…daughter's evil simply doesn't seem like such a bad trade off in this instance. The elements were all firmly in place: first person narration; more metaphors and similes than you can shake a stick at; a lone, hard drinking, tough guy detective; an ex-cop of some kind, frustrated by the corrupt system of justice; beset by a convoluted case set among the upper classes; femme fatales; disappearing corpses; hostile police and prosecutors; and so on.