I bounced off "The Maltese Falcon" but I thought I'd give this a go.

Much more my sort of thing.

I think Chandler's style allows you to have more feeling for the central character, I know that Dashiell Hammett gave Sam Spade no interior dialogue deliberately, but there's this lovely edgy flippant hidden bleeding heart to Philip Marlowe.

The plot barely hangs together but it's hard to notice that with all the characters being so richly drawn