The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler is a gritty, sometimes disturbing, murder detective story. It contains various sexual scenes in which the female 'femme fatale' "slut" is naked (in chapters 7, 9 & 24) drugged, being slapped (" I slapped her around a little more. She didn't mind the slaps" ch 7), photographed while posing for a pornographic photo shoot, in front of a pole containing a hidden camera, by an effeminate bisexual man, Geiger, who organisies sex orgies and blackmails rich customers. He is also a buyer and seller of pornographic books (he runs an illicit porn lending library: "a lending library of elaborate smut"). The book contains a variety of derogatory references to Jews and homosexuals and sexist remarks about women like "The dumb broad" and "the blonde" Suggestive links are made between violence and sex e.g. in chapter 6, where the reader is led to believe that the female has cried out during sex and Marlowe immediately thinks of a patient being tied down with leather straps in a hospital. We later find out that she actually cried out in reaction to the flash of the hidden camera, while being photographed in the nude.The book is laden with sexual innuendo and the sexually suggestive conversations between the character Vivian Sternwood and Marlowe have been heavily censored by publishers in the past. Verdict by irishparents: Not a suitable choice for teenagers to study in the English classroom.
Below is a synopsis of the storyline and some comments taken from the Amazon.co.uk site
Philip Marlowe, a PI, is contracted by an elderly millionaire who is dying. The old man is concerned to find out what happened to his son-in-law, who has disappeared. Marlowe's investigation leads him through various demimondes of Los Angeles, where nothing is what it at first seems to be. There are the inevitable deaths and killings, encounters with petty criminals, sinister businessmen, assassins, and with the millionaire's two damaged daughters. Chandler creates a powerful and saturating sense of the anarchy that lies below the mansions and glitter of 30s Los Angeles, and the emptiness of the lives of both the wealthy, and the assorted crooks, chancers and victims who feature in his story. People act, mainly badly, for what they see as their own interests or their own survival. Despite - or precisely because of - the seaminess and moral anarchy of the world Marlowe descends into, the book is ultimately about preserving and protecting a sense of humanity. The writing is sharp, sophisticated, often funny and memorable. Chandler/Marlowe have many imitations, but this is the real thing: gritty, painful, existential and seriously human.
The New York Times