# books / The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep is about as dark and gritty as crime fiction gets. Chandler has a gift for painting rain-drenched, gloomy pictures of LA, and a knack for leaving the reader floating in uncertainty.

I first read The Big Sleep when I was at school, after a teacher compared a short story I had written to the style of this book. She was being rather generous, but I did enjoy the no-frills way that Chandler delivers the plot, in Marlowe’s dry witty voice. A glad re-read.