I enjoyed reading the book. And that enjoyment primarily was owing to the very stylized
noirish atmosphere conveyed by the language which bristles with incredible similes on nearly every page. Here's a fairly representative sample fron ch. 28.
"Her very blue eyes flashed so sharply that I could almost see the sweep of their glance, like the sweep of a sword. . . She brought the glass over. Bubbles rose in it like false hopes. She bent over me. Her breath was as delicate as the eyes of a fawn."
And the women. . .
They seem incapable of normal affection. Eddie Mars' wife "Silver-Wig" gives Marlowe a kiss after she frees him.
"Her face under my mouth was like ice. She put her hands up and took hold of my head and kissed me hard on the lips. Her lips were like ice, too.
"I went out through the door and it closed behind me, without sond, and the rain blew in under the porch, not as cold as her lips."
When one considers the vampiric quality of the Sternwood daughters--particularly the psychotic Carmen--one is certainly tempted to consider the book as misogynistic in the extreme. However the men are as bad: materialistic, cruel, vicious, brutal, sadistic, etc. Marlowe himself is no holy avenging angel. The only couple I can think of that seem to have a genuine affection is the unfortunate Harry Jones and the Blonde Agnes.
The plot of the novel is very diffuse and in many ways it is really a couple of stories vaguely linked by the dead Rusty Regan. It is the atmosphere of poison and rot that is memorable.
So in the end I believe that what makes the book live is its atmosphere of nihilistic darkness.
"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on tip of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed,. . . His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep."