History of crime fiction quite complicated, forcing him to embark on an odyssey through the urban landscape. He is involved with organized crime and other lowlifes on the "mean streets" of, preferably, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, or Chicago. A hard-boiled private eye has an ambivalent attitude towards the police. It is his ambition to save America and rid it of its mean elements all by himself. As Raymond Chandler's protagonist Philip Marlowe—immortalized by actor Humphrey Bogart in the movie adaptation (1946) of the novel "The Big Sleep" (1939)—admits to his client, General Sternwood, he finds it rather tiresome, as an individualist, to
The Best of Everything (novel) same name released by Twentieth Century Fox directed by Jean Negulesco and starring Diane Baker, Hope Lange, Stephen Boyd, Suzy Parker, Robert Evans, Brian Aherne and Joan Crawford. Longtime Fox music director Alfred Newman wrote the final musical score of his contract with the studio for the film. The novel was also adapted into a soap opera of the same name written by James Lipton. The show aired on ABC from March 30 to September 25, 1970. An off-Broadway play adaptation of the novel, adapted and directed by Julie Kramer, opened in October 2012 at HERE Arts Center in New