Status Updates From The Big Sleep (Philip Marlo...

"The butler came along the red path with smooth light steps and his back as straight as an ironing board."

"...with sad eyes and a smile as wide as Wilshire Boulevard."

"The old man licked his lips watching me, over and over again, drawing one lip slowly across the other with a funeral absorption, like an undertaker dry-washing his hands."

"I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider"

"I lit the cigarette and blew a lungful at him and he sniffed at it like a terrier at a rathole."

"The champagne as cold as Valley Forge"

The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work show girl uses her last good pair of stockings."

"A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wildflowers fighting for life on a bare rock."

"They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket."

"The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men."

"The light had an unreal greenish color, like light filtered through an aquarium tank."

"It opened into a sort of vestibule that was about as warm as a slow oven."

"She bit it [thumb] and sucked slowly, turning it around in her mouth like a baby with a comforter."

"Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain."

"...and she had little sharp predatory teeth, as white as fresh orange pith and shiny as porcelain."

Quoting all the similes because good lord. Here we go:

"Beyond the garage werr some decorative trees trimmed as carefully as poodle dogs."