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Genre

Crime novel; detective novel; mystery; noir; Los Angeles fiction

Point of View

First-person

Tone

The author and narrator share the same tone of darkness and cynical romanticism

Tense

Immediate past

Setting

Los Angeles in the 1930s

Foreshadowing

The portrait and its dark eyes; the stained glass; the weather

Major Conflict

Detective Philip Marlowe is hired to take care of a blackmailing case involving a man named Arthur Gwynn Geiger, a pornographer whose death causes many other deaths. The novel also concerns the search for Rusty Regan, which occupies the second half of the book and becomes a second plot line

Rising Action

The murder of Geiger; the death of Owen Taylor; Brody's blackmailing and death; Carol Lundgren's capture; Agnes's partnership with Harry Jones and, earlier, Joe Brody; the finding of Mona Grant; Carmen's appearance in Marlowe's bed; General Sternwood's admission of wanting to find Rusty Regan; Carmen's attempt to murder Marlowe in the oilfields

Climax

Carmen attempts to kill Marlowe in the abandoned oil field, causing Marlowe to put the pieces of the Rusty Regan puzzle together and link it with the rest of the plot

Falling Action

Marlowe's explanation to Vivian Sternwood of what he knows about Rusty Regan causing her to confess to the disposal of her husband's body and causing her to promise to help Carmen towards a cure for her madness.

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