The Big Sleep

　　《大眠》是瑞蒙．錢德勒出版於1939年世界大戰那年的小說，曾兩度被改編成電影，1946年的版本由Howard Hawks執導，亨佛萊．鮑嘉和洛琳．白考兒主演。小說家威廉．福克納也參與了腳本寫作。本書也是偵探菲力普．馬羅首度登場的小說，被認為是錢德勒最傑出的作品之一。

　　書名The Big Sleep，將死亡以一種更亙古、更舒適也更一了百了如暮色降臨的樣態說了出來。故事敘述史坦梧先生，一個往日威風的將軍，如今又老又殘，兩條腿和半邊下腹都已經麻痺，能吃的東西很少，睡眠很淺，多半時候都需要靠暖氣活命，和新生的蜘蛛一樣。他是一個苟延殘喘，非常乏味的在過奢華日子的人。

　　史坦梧先生有兩個年輕女兒，都漂亮又狂野。其中一個結過三次婚，最後一次是嫁給一個以前幹私酒買賣的，道上的人叫他鐵鏽仔雷根。兩個女兒各有各的墮落處，薇薇安被寵壞了，驕縱、精明，而且相當殘忍無情，而卡門只是個喜歡剝蒼蠅翅膀的小孩子。薇薇安上的是上流勢利的好學校，還上了大學，卡門則轉過半打學校，一間比一間校風開放，最後又轉回起點。一般人犯過的各種罪過，她們全都犯過。

　　史坦梧先生找私家偵探馬羅來，是因為他「再度」受到勒索。他收到了一封署名「Ａ．Ｇ．蓋格」的人寄來的勒索信，希望馬羅能幫他除去這根背上的芒刺……

　　* 本書中譯本<<大眠>>由時報出版出版

　　Hard-boiled detective fiction at its best: Raymond Chandler's best loved novel, The Big Sleep, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

　　'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.'

　　Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is hired by wheelchair-bound General Sternwood to discover who is indulging in some petty blackmail. A weary, old man, Sternwood just wants the problem to go away. But Marlowe finds he has his work cut out just keeping Sternwood's wild, devil-may-care daughters out of trouble as they prowl LA's dirtiest and darkest streets. And pretty soon, he's up to his neck in hoodlums and corpses . . .

作者簡介

瑞蒙．錢德勒(Raymond Chandler)

　　出生於芝加哥，但因父母離異，隨母遷居倫敦，錢德勒的童年都在英國度過，大學念的是杜爾威奇(Dulwich)學院，成年之後返回美國加州定居。

　　錢德勒開筆甚晚，45歲才正式發表第一篇小說〈勒索者不開槍〉，刊載於當時的廉價雜誌《黑面具》（Black Mask）上，然而，錢德勒和達許．漢密特所領軍的這批廉價小說，卻成功的推翻了英國古典推理對美國偵探小說的宰制，開啟了美國本土冷硬派私探小說的傳統，是為推理史上有名的「美國革命」。

　　錢德勒逝於1959年，畢生共完成七部長篇和為數廿部左右的短篇。其中以偵探馬羅為主角的系列更是他寫作的高峰。馬羅就像海明威筆下的硬漢，即便處境艱難也不肯拋開君子風度與誠實價值，每每讓讀者受到震撼。深愛馬羅系列作品的奧斯卡金獎名導比利．懷德就曾說：「錢錢勒的小說，每一頁都有閃電。」錢德勒的電影劇本也是其重要的創作。

　　雖然以通俗小說起家，錢德勒的作品卻深受文學名家艾略特、卡繆、錢鍾書、村上春樹等人的喜愛，在西方文壇更有「犯罪小說的桂冠詩人」之稱。

　　錢德勒以馬羅為主角的系列作有：《大眠》、《再見，吾愛》、《高窗》、《湖中女子》、《小妹》、《漫長的告別》、《重播》。

　　Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and moved to England with his family when he was twelve. He attended Dulwich College, Alma Mater to some of the twentieth century’s most renowned writers. Returning to America in 1912, he settled in California, worked in a number of jobs, and later married. It was during the Depression era that he seriously turned his hand to writing and his first published story appeared in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1933, followed six years later by his first novel. The Big Sleep introduced the world to Philip Marlowe, the often imitated but never-bettered hard-boiled private investigator. It is in Marlowe’s long shadow that every fictional detective must stand – and under the influence of Raymond Chandler’s addictive prose that every crime author must write. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.