The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler

Feb 2011 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Barbara Barnes, Henry Devas, Ian Batchelor, Jude Akuwudike, Kelly Burke, Leah Brotherhood, Madeline Potter, Sam Dale, Sean Baker, and Toby Stephens

About this audiobook

Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the ’40s and ’50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily. The Big Sleep finds the world-weary, wisecracking investigator consulted by a wealthy family man with two big problems: his children. Carmen Sternwood has got herself mixed up with a blackmailer, while Vivian has managed to mislay her husband, ex-bootlegger Rusty Regan. Old, ailing General Sternwood hires Marlowe to take care of things - but it’s not too long before the bodies start piling up, and Marlowe finds himself knee-deep in trouble... Starring Toby Stephens, this landmark dramatisation retains all the suspense and excitement of Chandler’s complex and compelling novel.

Ratings and reviews

Very well done I love Chandlers Marlowe

About the author

Madeline Potter was born in Romania in 1989 and grew up Romani in nineties post-Communist Romania. She now lives in Scotland and is a scholar of nineteenth-century literature at the University of Edinburgh, having earned her PhD from the University of York in 2020. Her academic monograph, THEOLOGICAL MONSTERS, will be published in 2024. THE ROMA: A TRAVELLING HISTORY is her first trade book.