A detailed chapter-by-chapter summary of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler for Leaving Cert English, covering the full plot with exam-focused commentary.

The Setup: General Sternwood’s Request

Philip Marlowe, a private detective in 1930s Los Angeles, is hired by General Sternwood, a wealthy, dying old man confined to a wheelchair in his sweltering greenhouse. Sternwood has two daughters, Vivian and Carmen, both of whom cause him endless trouble. The General’s immediate problem is a man named Arthur Geiger, who is blackmailing him over gambling debts supposedly owed by Carmen.

Sternwood also mentions Rusty Regan, his son-in-law (married to Vivian), who disappeared a month ago. The General says he is not asking Marlowe to find Regan, but it is clear the disappearance weighs on him. Marlowe leaves the greenhouse having agreed to deal with the blackmail. On his way out, he meets Carmen, who is flirtatious and unstable, and Vivian, who is sharp and suspicious of why Marlowe has really been hired.

The opening chapters establish two things that matter for the exam: the Sternwood family is wealthy and rotten, and Marlowe is the only honest person in the room. That contrast between moral integrity and a corrupt world is the engine of the entire novel.

Geiger and the First Murder

Marlowe investigates Geiger and discovers he runs a pornography lending library disguised as a bookshop. He stakes out Geiger’s house and hears gunshots. Inside, he finds Geiger dead and Carmen drugged and posed in front of a camera. Someone has taken photographs of Carmen in a compromising position, presumably for blackmail purposes. The camera is empty. The film has been taken.

Marlowe gets Carmen home without calling the police. He returns to Geiger’s house later and finds the body has been moved. This is the first indication that someone else is cleaning up behind the scenes, and it is one of the details that makes the plot so difficult to follow on first reading.

The Sternwood family’s chauffeur, Owen Taylor, is found dead in a car submerged in the ocean. Taylor was in love with Carmen and may have killed Geiger to protect her. Whether Taylor’s death is murder or suicide is never resolved. Chandler himself famously admitted he did not know who killed the chauffeur. For the exam, this ambiguity is the point. In the world of The Big Sleep, not every crime gets solved. Not every death gets explained.

Eddie Mars and the Expanding Web

Marlowe’s investigation leads him to Eddie Mars, a casino owner and gangster who is connected to almost everyone in the story. Mars is smooth, confident, and dangerous. He rented a house to Geiger, he runs a gambling operation where Vivian loses money, and his wife Mona has supposedly run off with Rusty Regan.

Chandler uses Mars as the embodiment of how corruption works in Los Angeles. Mars does not commit crimes with his own hands. He creates systems: debts, compromises, dependencies. Everyone owes him something. He is protected because he knows too much about too many powerful people.

Vivian visits Marlowe and tries to find out what he knows about Regan. She is defensive and evasive. Marlowe is attracted to her but does not trust her. Their relationship is one of the most interesting dynamics in the novel: mutual attraction undermined by mutual suspicion.

Joe Brody and the Photographs

Marlowe tracks the stolen photographs to Joe Brody, a small-time crook who took the film from Geiger’s camera and is now trying to blackmail the Sternwoods himself. While Marlowe is confronting Brody, Carmen shows up with a gun, demanding the photos. Marlowe disarms her.

Then Carol Lundgren, Geiger’s young associate, arrives and shoots Brody dead, believing Brody killed Geiger. Marlowe catches Lundgren and hands him over to the police. The blackmail plot is resolved. General Sternwood’s immediate problem is dealt with.

But Marlowe cannot leave it alone. Regan is still missing. The case feels incomplete. This is a key character trait for exam answers: Marlowe is not motivated by money. He keeps digging because his sense of justice demands it, even when his client has not asked him to.

Carmen and Marlowe

Carmen visits Marlowe’s apartment and gets into his bed uninvited. Marlowe rejects her. She reacts with a strange, fixed smile that is more menacing than seductive. This scene matters because it shows Marlowe’s moral code in action. He will not take advantage of a vulnerable, unstable woman, even when she offers herself to him. It also shows how dangerous Carmen is: her reaction to rejection is not embarrassment but something closer to malice.

After she leaves, Marlowe tears the sheets off his bed. He is disgusted, not by Carmen specifically, but by everything she represents: the Sternwood wealth, the entitlement, the assumption that everything and everyone can be bought or used.

Canino and the Danger Escalates

Marlowe follows the trail to a remote garage run by Art Huck, where he discovers that Mona Mars, Eddie’s wife, is being kept hidden. She has not run off with Regan. She is being used by Eddie Mars as part of a cover story. If people believe Mona left with Regan, nobody looks for Regan’s body.

Lash Canino, Mars’s hired killer, captures Marlowe and poisons him with whiskey laced with something that knocks him out. Mona helps Marlowe escape, cutting his bonds. Marlowe kills Canino in a shootout. This is one of the few moments of outright violence from Marlowe, and Chandler handles it without glamour. Killing Canino is necessary but not heroic.

The Truth About Rusty Regan

Marlowe confronts Vivian and pieces together the truth. Carmen killed Rusty Regan. She took him to an old oil sump on the Sternwood property and shot him because he rejected her advances, the same fixed, vicious reaction she showed when Marlowe rejected her. Vivian discovered the body and went to Eddie Mars for help. Mars disposed of Regan’s body in the oil sump and created the cover story about Mona running off with him. In exchange, he gained permanent leverage over the Sternwoods.

Marlowe gives Vivian a choice: get Carmen psychiatric help, or he goes to the police. He does not go to the General. He will not destroy a dying man with the truth that his daughter is a murderer. This final decision is morally complicated. Marlowe is suppressing the truth, which goes against his principles, but he is doing it to protect a man who has already suffered enough.

The Ending and the Title

The novel ends with Marlowe reflecting on death. “The big sleep” is death itself. Regan is sleeping it, and soon the General will too, and eventually everyone will. The final paragraph is one of the most famous in crime fiction. Marlowe imagines Regan at the bottom of the oil sump, and he thinks about how, in the end, it does not matter whether you are rich or poor, good or corrupt. Death comes for everyone.

The ending is bleak. Justice has not been served in any conventional sense. Carmen will get treatment, not prison. Eddie Mars remains free. The police know nothing. Marlowe has solved the case but changed nothing about the world that produced it. For the Comparative Study, this ending is essential: the general vision is dark, tempered only by Marlowe’s personal integrity in a system that rewards dishonesty.

Why This Summary Matters for the Exam

The Big Sleep has a famously complicated plot. Students lose marks by getting confused about who killed whom and why. The key things to remember are: Geiger was blackmailing the Sternwoods. Carmen killed Regan. Eddie Mars covered it up for leverage. Marlowe solved everything but could not fix the underlying corruption.

For the Comparative Study, focus on how Chandler presents a world where institutions (police, courts, wealth) all fail, and the only source of moral authority is one man with a code he refuses to break. That is the heart of the novel and the strongest material for General Vision, Cultural Context, and Theme or Issue answers.