Description
‘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’.
The four million dollars is General Sternwood, a paralysed old man, already two-thirds dead. He has two beautiful daughters – one a gambler, the other a degenerate – and an elusive adventurer as a son-in-law. The General is being blackmailed and Marlowe’s assignment is to get the blackmailer off his back. As it turns out there’s a lot more at stake.
For Mr Standfast’s money probably the best opening paragraph in Crime Fiction. A true modern classic.
