I have read this many times before but never really understood it; the plot is quite complex, but essentially it is a novel about a sex crime, committed unusually by a woman, the younger daughter of General Sternwood, who engages Marlow.
Sternwood, a wealthy, elderly father, has 2 daughters Vivian and Carmen, Vivian formerly married to an Irish American rebel Rusty Regan of whom her father is fond. Sternwood is being blackmailed which is the plot trigger. It transpires fairly quickly that Carmen is a pretty socially disturbed your woman, quite happy to pose naked for a pornogragher who is blackmailing Sternwood. A lot of quite exciting plot stems from this, but the plot is really about the death of Rusty Regan who is murdered by Carmen after he refuses to sleep with her, as indeed does Marlow when she appears naked in his bed.
I said to Paddy half way through that Chandler is the master in English prose of the simile, although I then read a couple of pages to prove this and couldn’t find any! Will read a few more, just to get a feel for the writing.
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