There are writers and there are writers.

Raymond Chandler, to me, is one of the best writers there ever was: A man who could make his noir mystery novels absolutely sing.  Almost every line in every one of his books, of which he wrote a mere 7 if them (an eighth novel was in the works when he passed away in 1959), were fascinating, hilarious, and eminently interesting.

Mr. Chandler turned to writing relatively late in life and his first stories appearing in “pulp” magazines such as Black Mask.  When he made his jump to novels with The Big Sleep (his first novel) he took elements from these stories and reworking them.

The Big Sleep, which was originally released in 1939, is one of my all time favorite Chandler novels (though Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye are nothing to sneeze at!) and anyone with any interest in great mystery novels should check it out.

Now, I’m not pointing out this novel just for the heck of it.  I’m pointing it out because a few days ago The Annotated Big Sleep was released both in Paperback and Kindle and I’m not going to beat around the bush: You should get it.

Here’s my Amazon review of the novel:

Love Raymond Chandler’s novels -he is one of my all time favorite authors- and love The Big Sleep in particular and the Annotated Big Sleep is a truly wonderful peek behind the curtain at what makes this novel tick. We get a wealth of information regarding the creation of this book, particularly interesting being the short stories -and samples offered- of how Chandler “cannibalized” some of his short stories in the creation of this book.

We also get some wonderful history of L.A. back in the 1930’s, a guide to the slang Chandler used (much of this, of course, has become well known through books and films), as well as some very interesting insight into Chandler himself.

Having read the novel a few times before, this Annotated Edition was truly eye-opening, especially when it comes to some of the novel’s sexuality. I was always aware of it, but when pointed out in the Annotations it became clear to me that Mr. Chandler had some serious hang ups regarding sexuality, whether “straight” or otherwise. Still, after all this time one must be cautious to draw too many conclusions, though the inference of the author’s possible sexuality presented in one of the notations is certainly intriguing.

I have the Kindle edition of the book and it is incredibly easy to read the book and switch to the voluminous amount of footnotes. You read along and when you find a footnote you simply tap on it and are instantly transported to the information presented. Sometimes its offered with beautiful illustrations, often with very informative explanations, and once you’re done reading the footnote, you just tap the footnote number again and you’re back to where you were reading. Couldn’t be easier!

So if you’re a fan of Raymond Chandler’s works as I am and, as I said before, want to get a damn good peek behind the curtain regarding this novel, you absolutely must have The Annotated Big Sleep.