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A review by sidharthvardhan
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
3.0
This is your stereotypical crime Noir - all about people back-stabbing each-other. There is a detective who gets all the cool dialogues. Almost all the women fall in category of femme fatale who can be assumed to be wearing, if they are wearing anything, a deep cut dress or a night dress or better still a still a deep-cut night dress. They are all trying to seduce our hero, who may accept or reject their proposal as the case may be. You can be sure there will be drug dealers in there, somewhere - and everybody, without exception, is carrying guns. Everybody is morally deficient in one way or other and there are sure to be psychopaths. I just love psychopaths - they are the only characters I can relate to.
One thing I hate in all crime books when in the rare case hero gets outnumbered or overpowered by villain(s). My problem is that villains are satisfied in knocking the hero to unconsciousness and then just tying him. Why won't they just kill him? They have killed other characters far less threatening than heroes and yet they are satisfied in captivating him, and in a place where they can easily get help. The least they could do is to break some limbs but no .... It is frustrating for someone like me who roots for them. I call it Brutus syndrome - after Brutus from Popeye the sailor man - you know how he is happy in just tying Popeye every time and whats more, around a place where he can easily get some spinach. It is worse in case of masked heroes - villains never unmask them, they are just too respectful of hero's right to privacy. It is high time that our villains should learn from their mistakes.
For me, Chandler's problem is that of Austen and Wells; they were all highly and beautifully original - but the problem is after once they came up with the egg of Columbus, they get averaged out by the better and bad works inspired by them.
One thing I hate in all crime books when in the rare case hero gets outnumbered or overpowered by villain(s). My problem is that villains are satisfied in knocking the hero to unconsciousness and then just tying him. Why won't they just kill him? They have killed other characters far less threatening than heroes and yet they are satisfied in captivating him, and in a place where they can easily get help. The least they could do is to break some limbs but no .... It is frustrating for someone like me who roots for them. I call it Brutus syndrome - after Brutus from Popeye the sailor man - you know how he is happy in just tying Popeye every time and whats more, around a place where he can easily get some spinach. It is worse in case of masked heroes - villains never unmask them, they are just too respectful of hero's right to privacy. It is high time that our villains should learn from their mistakes.
For me, Chandler's problem is that of Austen and Wells; they were all highly and beautifully original - but the problem is after once they came up with the egg of Columbus, they get averaged out by the better and bad works inspired by them.