Author(s): Raymond Chandler

Classic Fiction

Private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is summoned to the mansion of General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). The general wants to resolve the 'gambling debts' that his daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) owes to bookseller Arthur Gwynn Geiger. As Marlowe is leaving, Sternwood's older daughter, the divorced Mrs. Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), stops him. She suspects her father's true motive for calling in a detective is to find his protégé Sean Regan, who had mysteriously disappeared a month earlier.