The Books canon

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Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
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1 volume
SortEditorial Year Title
Subject·Blackmail✕clear
Fiction · Hardboiled crime

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler
1939 · 231 pages

A dying general among his orchids hires Philip Marlowe to settle a blackmail debt, and the job opens into pornography, missing husbands, and Los Angeles money. Chandler's sentences became an American standard.

★ 6.9