Lunchtime read: The Big Sleep

There is a break of sorts in this book when one side of the case is solved and on his own initiative Marlowe sets off to solve the other nagging questions surrounding the disappearance of Regan the Irish bootlegger married to one of the Sherwood daughters. That has been the case everyone thought he was on and he now embarks on it of his own volition.

Highlights from chapters XVII to XX

* Having watched Geiger’s gay lover shoot down Brody Marlowe takes him back to the house and there has to calm the man down with a couple of punches and some hand cuffs before discovering the body of Geiger has been replaced in the house

* Marlowe calls up his friend in the DA’s office and gets him to come down and clear up the mess, which involves handing the details of Geiger’s killer and Brody’s to a rather bemused and ungrateful police officer

* Having nailed those two crimes the next twist focuses on Regan the Irish bootlegging husband of one of General Sherwood’s daughters and so Marlowe calls on missing persons who reveal that the suspicion is that the Irishman ran off with the wife of a nightclub owner Eddie Mars, who incidentally owned the house Geiger lived in

Armed with that information no doubt Marlowe will now go off and do what the police have failed to be able to and find the missing Irishman. More tomorrow…