Our book for September 14, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, was the author's first novel and a breakout hit. In The Big Sleep, he combined two earlier stories he had written for pulp fiction magazines. The Big Sleep is also the first appearance of Chandler's famous character, detective Philip Marlowe. Chandler, who had been struggling financially, found work in Hollywood soon after the publication of his first novels. He went from earning a penny a word for his first pulp stories to making thousands as a screenwriter for Paramount Studios.
[Biographical information taken from the EBSCO database "Biography Collection Complete," available through the Library Web site.)
