The Verge Book Club took a tour on the noir side in December, by reading one of the all-time classics in the genre: Raymond Chandlers The Big Sleep. The novel, which introduces readers to detective Philip Marlowe, a character Chandler revisits in future tomes, sparked immediate Book Club debate over a range of topics. Whether Chandler depicts women as furniture or wild animals, what illness (if any) afflicted the insufferable Carmen Sternwood, and whether The Big Sleeps enduring legacy and influence is deserved or not. Join the Verge Book Club forum here.