Detective Philip Marlowe is a latter-day knight with a weakness for damsels in distress. When he is hired to investigate the blackmail of an aging millionaire’s wild and beautiful younger daughter, he is drawn into the seamy world of post-Prohibition Los Angeles. There, Marlowe must untie a tangled web of deceit, corruption, lust, seduction, death and love—and decide what to do with the dark family secrets he finds.     A brash but honourable protagonist, Philip Marlowe is a landmark literary creation and the archetype for the private detective. In 2005, Time magazine hailed The Big Sleep among the best English-language novels published since 1923.