"The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler (1939)

Rain drops break against the canvas top. Tires press the gravel. A spread-out, anonymous, automobile-mediated metropolis hums and rains. Consistency of one's character carries one through the daily routine.

Philip Marlowe has an artist's compulsion to guard beauty. His instrument is integrity. (An artist, in contrast to an artisan, is not discouraged by the scarcity of paying customers. An entrepreneur combines an artist's compulsion to create with an artisan's belief in marketability as the measure of merit.)

Sternwood sisters are unforgiving of unrequited purchases. Too rich to be grateful for being purchased themselves, the sisters negotiate the vacuum sustained by their inherited wealth and made attractive by the prevailing social norms, which esteem a female as but an accessory.