Raymond Chandler

Private eye Philip Marlowe faces the most bizarre case of his life when a friend's apparent suicide turns into a double murder involving a sexy blonde, a disturbed gangster, and a suitcase of drug money.

Stranger on a train: A man jokes with a stranger about killing his wife. The stranger wants his own father dead. In theory, each could murder the other's victim. The problem is, the stranger takes the idea seriously. North by Northwest: An ad executive is mistaken for a spy by foreign agents.

Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously evil as Barbara Stanwyck? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? When slick salesman Walter Neff walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson, he intends to sell her insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. It is one of the most wickedly perverse stories ever told...

Murder, my sweet: They say crime doesn't pay. Private detective Philip Marlowe knows better. The fat wad of folding money warming his breast pocket is the kind of thing that keeps him going through thick and thicker as he wades chin deep into a mystery involving a missing necklace and a missing hoodlum's moll named Velma. Out of the past: A one-time private investigator walks the straight and narrow of small-town life until an acquaintance from his...