This is Chandler’s best. It is a must read for any fan of detective novels. Just re-read it on the plane down to Buenos Aires. I bet the hayday of that town was similar to the time chandler writes about around LA in the 30s. Lots of dark bars with shady people and dangerous women in long silk dresses. Some of them are still there at Asia De Cuba http://www.asiadecuba.com.ar/ Saturday night. One of the things I like the best is Chandler’s description of characters. One of my favorites is a secretary in this book:

“While she was looking up numbers and telephoning hither and yon I looked her over. She was pale with a sort of natural paleness and she looked healthy enough. Her coarse-grained coppery blond hair was not ugly in itself, but it was drawn back so tightly over her narrow head that it almost lost the effect of being hair at all. Her eyebrows were thin and unusually straight and were darker than her hair, almost chesnut color. Her nostrils had a whitish look of an anaemic person. Her chin was too small, too sharp and looked unstable. She wore no makeup except orange-red on her mouth and not too much of that. Her eyes behind the glasses were very large, cobalt blue with big irises and a vague expression. Both lids were tight so that the eyes had a slightly oriental look, or as if the skin of her face was naturally so tight that it stretched her eyes at the corners. The whole face had a sort of off-key neurotic charm that only needed some clever makeup to be striking.
She wore a one-piece linen dress with short sleeves and no ornament of any kind. Her bare arms had down on them, and a few freckles.”

I rate 5 of 5 stars.

One of the best final paragraphs I’ve ever read. The rest of it is pretty damned good too. Liked it better than The Big Sleep, which is the only other Chandler I have read. Based on those two, I intend to remedy that soon though.