Wow, didn't realize there were so many paper editions and evidently even a dramatized digital version. For clarity, and looking inside my copy, this review is for a paper First Vintage/Black Lizard Edition, August 1992. I couldn't find a matching cover to the couple dozen choices under the paperback versions, so I chose to post my review here.I did read a few 1 and 2 star reviews after I'd finished the book, and I can understand someone not caring for a particular style, but had a hard time, without concrete examples, imagining what was boring or outdated (other than a few terms: "buzzer pinned to the flap" - "slaty eyes" - "a six mover"). Nothing more than I find reading British books (I'm in Texas), and the Kindle app usually can get me a definition for the cultural variances pretty easily. And that might be a good reason to opt for a digital version, though I personally would want to avoid any "dramatized" versions the reviews bring up. I feel I probably read the author's original intent in my edition.The descriptive atmosphere was sparing but, I thought, extremely effectively used. "Seaward a few gulls wheeled and swooped over something in the surf and far out a white yacht looked as if it was hanging in the sky." - "A nasty building. A building in which the smell of stale cigar butts would be the cleanest odor."Which brings me to two other things I really liked about Raymond Chandler's writing: sentence variation and a wry sense of self humor.I had been under the mistaken impression that Chandler mostly or even only used short sentences. In fact his has quite a variety, including the use of complex compound sentences followed by short fragments. The effect is stimulating and powerful:"I came out at a service station glaring with wasted light, where a bored attendant in a white cap and a dark blue windbreaker sat hunched on a stool, inside the steamed glass, reading a paper. I started in, then kept going. I was as wet as I could get already. And on a night like that you can grow a beard waiting for a taxi. And taxi drivers remember."The humor, I felt, was subtle. Enjoyed it tremendously.There's much more I could mention, pro and con, the well developed slowly evolving plot, the relationships and attitudes among the women and men, and lack of hispanics, blacks, or other ethnic groups (descriptive of the times) - but I'll end with Raymond's figurative use of language.I think the first contemporary author I became acutely aware of in their use of metaphors and similes was James Patterson in Zoo. In my review of Zoo, I mentioned how well they worked, most of the time, but occasionally seemed to veer off as not fitting the tone of the passage.I don't feel this is the case at all in The Big Sleep. The similes and metaphors are well spaced through-out from beginning to end. Appearing a bit more frequently during times of tension or mystery. And never, to my reading, out of place or jarring from the story:"Another man sat at the corner of the desk in a blue leather chair, a cold-eyed hatchet-faced man, as lean as a rake and as hard as the manager of a loan office." - "I pushed a flat tin of cigarettes at him. His small neat fingers speared one like a trout taking the fly." - "Her very blue eyes flashed so sharply that I could almost see the sweep of their glance, like the sweep of sword."For me, this is top flight quality writing that entertains.About as pure a 5 Star as I can give.