I haven't read all that much Raymond Chandler. I read
The Big Sleep more than a decade ago (specifically when I was trapped in a hotel in Las Vegas the week of 9/11 and I couldn't fly home). And if I've read more than that, I don't really recall. I do remember thinking "I'm more of a Dashiell Hammett guy" after reading
The Big Sleep, but sooner or later you want to read some of the other stuff.
Of course you can't be into noir film and not stumble across adaptations of his work and work he adapted into screenplays (see
Double Indemnity, where he gets a brief cameo).
But I figured I needed to read some more Philip Marlowe, Chandler's go-to Detective where Hammett had Sam Spade and The Continental Op.
Farewell, My Lovely (1940) is a winding mystery that starts on page 1 as Philip Marlowe fails to mind his own business when he sees a giant of a man, a white guy, walk into an African-American club and start a ruckus. He literally sticks his nose in and gets grabbed by Moose Malloy, a heist-man just paroled and out looking for his ex-girlfriend, Velma. Moose is stronger than he knows, stupidly violent, and single minded, and winds up killing the bar's manager.
In the aftermath, Marlowe gets wrapped up in the case, but no sooner does he decide to bail than he gets hired by a suave gentleman looking for protection as he bargains for the safe return of a lady-friend's hi-jacked jewels. Marlowe doesn't protect him and the gentleman winds up dead, and that, in turn gets Marlowe all the more involved with his failed job. Soon, beautiful dames, crooked cops, mentalists, shady hospitals and honestly illegitimate off-shore gambling operations all play a part. And a bright young daughter of a former police commissioner.