2024 the best of me film cast review

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The iconic first novel from crime fiction master Raymond Chandler, featuring Philip Marlowe, the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times).

A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

Reviewer: Felipe Adan Lerma
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A classic, modern enough for the 21st century
Review: Wow, didn't realize there were so many paper editions and evidently even a dramatized digital version. For clarity, and looking inside my copy, this review is for a paper First Vintage/Black Lizard Edition, August 1992. I couldn't find a matching cover to the couple dozen choices under the paperback versions, so I chose to post my review here.I did read a few 1 and 2 star reviews after I'd finished the book, and I can understand someone not caring for a particular style, but had a hard time, without concrete examples, imagining what was boring or outdated (other than a few terms: "buzzer pinned to the flap" - "slaty eyes" - "a six mover"). Nothing more than I find reading British books (I'm in Texas), and the Kindle app usually can get me a definition for the cultural variances pretty easily. And that might be a good reason to opt for a digital version, though I personally would want to avoid any "dramatized" versions the reviews bring up. I feel I probably read the author's original intent in my edition.The descriptive atmosphere was sparing but, I thought, extremely effectively used. "Seaward a few gulls wheeled and swooped over something in the surf and far out a white yacht looked as if it was hanging in the sky." - "A nasty building. A building in which the smell of stale cigar butts would be the cleanest odor."Which brings me to two other things I really liked about Raymond Chandler's writing: sentence variation and a wry sense of self humor.I had been under the mistaken impression that Chandler mostly or even only used short sentences. In fact his has quite a variety, including the use of complex compound sentences followed by short fragments. The effect is stimulating and powerful:"I came out at a service station glaring with wasted light, where a bored attendant in a white cap and a dark blue windbreaker sat hunched on a stool, inside the steamed glass, reading a paper. I started in, then kept going. I was as wet as I could get already. And on a night like that you can grow a beard waiting for a taxi. And taxi drivers remember."The humor, I felt, was subtle. Enjoyed it tremendously.There's much more I could mention, pro and con, the well developed slowly evolving plot, the relationships and attitudes among the women and men, and lack of hispanics, blacks, or other ethnic groups (descriptive of the times) - but I'll end with Raymond's figurative use of language.I think the first contemporary author I became acutely aware of in their use of metaphors and similes was James Patterson in Zoo. In my review of Zoo, I mentioned how well they worked, most of the time, but occasionally seemed to veer off as not fitting the tone of the passage.I don't feel this is the case at all in The Big Sleep. The similes and metaphors are well spaced through-out from beginning to end. Appearing a bit more frequently during times of tension or mystery. And never, to my reading, out of place or jarring from the story:"Another man sat at the corner of the desk in a blue leather chair, a cold-eyed hatchet-faced man, as lean as a rake and as hard as the manager of a loan office." - "I pushed a flat tin of cigarettes at him. His small neat fingers speared one like a trout taking the fly." - "Her very blue eyes flashed so sharply that I could almost see the sweep of their glance, like the sweep of sword."For me, this is top flight quality writing that entertains.About as pure a 5 Star as I can give.

Reviewer: Kent R. Spillner
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Gritty and Great
Review: This book is great! Reading it felt like watching a classic film noir masterpiece. The story unfolds in a unique and surprising way as Marlowe keeps uncovering new secrets the other characters tried to keep hidden from him. I must confess, I was a little disappointed in the ending, it felt a little too neat and tidy considering everything that happened leading up to it, but it’s still a highly enjoyable read!

Reviewer: Ruth Anderson
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A seductive, atmospheric classic, 4.5 stars...
Review: The Big Sleep, first published in 1939, introduced the world to Philip Marlowe, private detective, a character who would go on to become synonymous with the concept of "hard-boiled" crime fiction. I've long been a fan of film noir, notable for its fast-talking, world-weary detectives, glamorous femme fatales, and striking use of shadow and light to illustrate the seamier side of life on-screen. Considering how much I love classic examples of the film noir genre such as The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon, it is all the more shocking that it has taken me this long to read the literary equivalent of those films. Chandler turned to writing in his mid-forties after losing his job with an oil company due to the Depression, and his writing reflects a hard-won maturity and cynicism. He began writing short stories for pulp magazines, and The Big Sleep was based on two of them -- "Killer in the Rain" (1935) and "The Curtain" (1936).When Philip Marlowe is called to the home of the wealthy Sternwood family, he's hired by the elderly patriarch to make bookseller Arthur Geiger's attempt to blackmail his wild youngest daughter Carmen disappear. The General has a second daughter, Vivian, married to an ex-bootlegger named Rusty Regan who recently disappeared and may or may not be involved in the younger daughter's current trouble. At first blush what appears to be a fairly straightforward commission -- remove the thorn in the elderly General's side -- is anything but, as Marlowe quickly discovers that the Sternwood daughters have secrets to keep -- secrets that some may be willing to kill in order to keep quiet. Over the course of his investigation, Marlowe finds himself swept up in a seedy world of illegal pornographers and secret gambling establishments -- and the deeper Marlowe digs, the more bodies start to accumulate. And the answer to one question -- where is Rusty Regan? -- threatens to destroy the Sternwood reputation and silence Marlowe forever.Like the classic 1946 film adaptation that featured Bogart as Marlowe, the movie's source material twists and turns through the seamy side of a Los Angeles on the brink of exploding into the metropolis it would become in the 1940s during Hollywood's Golden Age. But Chandler is less concerned with Tinseltown's sheen and more with letting us accompany Marlowe as he navigates through the moral and ethical corruptions fostered by the excesses of L.A.'s position as an entertainment capital of the world. One criticism of the film and novel is the twisty, confusing nature of the plot. While this isn't a perfectly plotted novel, it isn't the mechanics of the investigation that captivated me -- it was witnessing Marlowe's responses to the characters and situations he encounters. Chandler's dialogue and prose are razor-sharp ("I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights."), an absolute joy to read -- this is a book I savored.Rich in atmosphere and character, The Big Sleep is an unforgettable introduction to Chandler's work. Marlowe is something like a shopworn knight -- world-weary, sarcastic and cynical, but clinging to a deeply rooted sense of honor and set of principles, he is a uniquely American literary hero. I'll definitely be reading his further adventures.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Well written and deserves to be ranked with the best crime novels of all time. A riveting and suspenseful story about the strange daughters of a man that cannot grasp how badly his spoiled daughters can behave and sink into the lowest depths of american graft and gambling. Phil Marlowe is the main character and only through his efforts can this family be rescued from total destruction. Watch out for the surprising and stunning conclusion!

Reviewer: Mario Manus
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The product looks perfect

Reviewer: Gayle Shaw
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The introduction of Philip Marlowe to the world, a flawed but fundamentally decent man. Oh and did I mention one of the drollest narrators ever . Nice edition.

Reviewer: Awen APS, SL
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: No hay mucho que objetar, tiene todo lo que esperas de un clásico. Lo recomiendo para cualquier persona que le gusta la novela negra.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great book, most of all because of the great dialogues and characters.Even if it was written more than 80 years ago, it's still actual.