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The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe #5)

4.01 of 5 stars 4.01 · rating details · 4,404 ratings · 196 reviews

A movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend and a pair of siblings with a shared secret lure Marlowe into the less than glamorous and more than a little dangerous world of Hollywood fame. Chandler's first foray into the industry that dominates the company town that is Los Angeles.

Paperback, 256 pages

Published August 12th 1988 by Vintage (first published 1949)

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May 10, 2012 Dan Schwent rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-and-mystery, 2012

A woman from a small Kansas town hires Philip Marlowe to find her missing brother. What Marlowe finds is himself ensnared in a web of drugs, blackmail, and murder...

As I've said many times, noir fiction and I go together like a bottle of cheap vodka and nightmares about being chased by coyotes. The Little Sister by the esteemed Raymond Chandler is no exception.

It may be because it's been a few months since I've read one of Raymond Chandler's oddly poetic noir masterpieces but I liked The Little...more

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Apr 26, 2011 notgettingenough rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-lit, crime-fiction

My, was Raymond in a foul mood when he wrote this. Fine by me as I was in one when I read it.

I see this book's copped a bit on goodreads. Unfair. Totally unfair. If you get the drift, the guy's got the shits and he is looking at life from the wrong end of the telescope, he does such a good job of that.

There are two types of people in the world. The ones for whom money is everything: they need to get as much of it as possible, take it willynilly from whereever they can, make sure nobody else gets...more My, was Raymond in a foul mood when he wrote this. Fine by me as I was in one when I read it.

I see this book's copped a bit on goodreads. Unfair. Totally unfair. If you get the drift, the guy's got the shits and he is looking at life from the wrong end of the telescope, he does such a good job of that.

There are two types of people in the world. The ones for whom money is everything: they need to get as much of it as possible, take it willynilly from whereever they can, make sure nobody else gets to touch it; and the ones for whom it is as trivial as something necessary can get. In this story, Marlowe is the latter, everybody else is the former.

Very early on in the story his client walks in, a girl highly motivated by money and as mean spirited as such people are.

'You can't talk to me like that,' she flared up. 'Pipe smoking is a dirty habit. Mother never let father smoke in the house, even the last two years after he had his stroke. He used to sit with that empty pipe on his mouth sometimes. But she didn't like him to do that really. We owed a lot of money too and she said she couldn't afford to give him money for useless things like tobacco. The church needed it much more than he did.'

It didn't bother her in the least to talk like that. People who think money is everything, do. But Marlowe, who couldn't be less motivated by the stuff, is haunted through the book by the picture of this miserable git surrounded by his ghastly family. Throughout he is made gloomier and gloomier by the disparity between the people who use money to get what they want and the ones who don't have it. That means the bell boy and the cop and the DA. The ones who are honest are worn out by their honesty, by fighting with so little on their side against people who don't have rules, whose word mean nothing, who think that power is its own right.

There are few of those moments in this book where Chandler makes you smile. I loved:

One of the girls was a dark beauty who had been younger.

I read that a dozen times, what a nice turn of phrase. But then, a few pages later, descibing a room:

...a tray that had held coffee.

I don't think you can get away with this. Sorry, Raymond, having the shits about something doesn't give you those sorts of liberties. Would Marlowe be that sloppy?

(less)

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Dec 08, 2008 Nicholas Karpuk rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Dames, Broads, Down on their luck joes, flat foots, PIs, hired goons

It was either the third or the fourth time a dame, in a fit of histrionics kissed Philip Marlowe that I became slightly exasperated.

Don't get me wrong, Raymond Chandler is a good writer, his prose is packed with cleverness to the point of overflowing, the dialogue snaps, and everything has the cool sleazy vibe of old time Hollywood.

But even one of the characters points out how baffling it is that ladies just seem to want to lock lips with sadsack detective Philip Marlowe.

Otherwise, the writing...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Andy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: hardboiled-dicks

Meh, you would think that Raymond Chandler would rip out his rapier wit when he finally tackled the subject of Phillip Marlowe in Hollywood, but there's something stale and cliched about the whole affair. A great opportunity to tear up the fakest city on the planet, and Chandler gets pussy on us. Boo!

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Mar 20, 2013 Aaron rated it 4 of 5 stars

Can I just say how I love that this one begins with something as innocuous as Marlowe trying to kill a fly? It's the perfect opening because it establishes a need for him that keeps the reader captivated long enough for the latest client to arrive.

Speaking of clients, Orfamy Quest is probably one of the most intriguing yet. Painted as a small town girl who chafes at Marlowe's snarky attitude, she would seem too innocent if not for Chandler drawing close attention to her lack of forthcomingness....more Can I just say how I love that this one begins with something as innocuous as Marlowe trying to kill a fly? It's the perfect opening because it establishes a need for him that keeps the reader captivated long enough for the latest client to arrive.

Speaking of clients, Orfamy Quest is probably one of the most intriguing yet. Painted as a small town girl who chafes at Marlowe's snarky attitude, she would seem too innocent if not for Chandler drawing close attention to her lack of forthcomingness. What particularly interested me was how she kept saying her brother, Orrin, has a bad temper and it seemed odd that he would need help. Their relationshp seemed to be hinting at darker territory the more I read on, and I kept asking myself WHY she would want to find him if he was such awful person. Turns out this is a bit of foreshadowing which I could have used a little more directly.

The rest of the story is compelling and twisty. I think I understand now that the reader isn't supposed to be able to figure things out before Marlowe, because though we get to see him do the investigating, we don't often get a clear picture until afterwards of how one character was connected to the plot. What matters is that Marlowe gets there and in the meantime we are glad to watch him do it.

There are often accusations of sexism in Chandler's world, and I can see a point to that. There are a number of female characters, ranging from secretaries to mothers, and of course the femme fatales. Nearly every one of the women are described with attention paid to their attractiveness, and at times this can get repetitive, though the diversity in description somewhat makes up for it. The thing most dwelled on is how willingly the fatales are to use their sexual promises to try and manipulate Marlowe, whose firm stance against them would seem to indicate that such behavior is immoral, and the sign of a bad women.

I prefer to think of it as 1)The consequence of being a male detective, which means anyone involved in his investigations will want to manipulate him/kill him, and so his being male means that the first approach the fatale will go with is the one which men show the most weakness for and 2)Females make for more compelling villains in some ways because at the time they were less common, and their motives are often more complex then the other gangsters which inhabit the novels. It could also be said that Marlowe's backstory, while never elaborated on, would paint him as the sort of person who has been hurt or suffered from being intimate with someone before, which would explain how reluctant he is to get involved just because a girl tries to seduce him.

That said, I was disappointed that the ending was just like The Lady In The Lake with final sentence devoted to the death of a character, but moreso because I liked this character and felt like the way it happened was too contrived. (less)

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Dec 07, 2012 Khalid Amin rated it 5 of 5 stars

the best of chandler... the best of noir..best atmosphere and style..it's magic .. it's the iconic noir .
I am always confused when trying to place chandler's best novel to mind.. I am his greatest fan '' world wide '' , and I always thought the scene where marlowe goes along with the cop's plane in '' lady in the lake '' is brilliant and so deep and it puts '' lady in the lake '' among top three.. other two would be '' the little siter '' .. I bit chandler was in a great mood when he wrote it.....more

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Dec 03, 2012 Gabriel C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: noir, 2012

Wow. Marlowe is coming apart at the seams. He's talking to himself and hating it all. He's spent a long time self-aware, winking at the camera, so on, but the wages of modernity and sin and whatever else are oh-so-much closer to the tipping point. There's something rich and dark moving just underneath the surface of the water, an anaconda or something, every inch muscle sheathed in sharp scales. I can see why so many people have gone down this Chandler well and I'm beginning to put together what...more

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Dec 01, 2011 Harry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Now here's an odd duck.

I got a collection of Raymond Chandler novels from the library recently, not expecting anything more than a couple of fun detective stories to read over Thanksgiving. For the first novel I read, The Lady in the Lake, that's pretty much what I got. Private eye Philip Marlowe is tasked to find a millionaire's missing wife, stumbles onto a conspiracy that gets quite a few people killed, and at the end of the story he gets the chance to prove he's the smartest man in the room,...more Now here's an odd duck.

I got a collection of Raymond Chandler novels from the library recently, not expecting anything more than a couple of fun detective stories to read over Thanksgiving. For the first novel I read, The Lady in the Lake, that's pretty much what I got. Private eye Philip Marlowe is tasked to find a millionaire's missing wife, stumbles onto a conspiracy that gets quite a few people killed, and at the end of the story he gets the chance to prove he's the smartest man in the room, which you get the feeling he cares about more than his payment. What struck me most about it was Chandler's lively prose, the hardboiled stuff everyone parodies today, often sight unseen. In reality Chandler's a stylist we've all got reason to be jealous of; no one aims for the gut like Chandler. When Marlowe finds a dead body in a lake: "The thing rolled over once more and an arm flapped up barely above the skin of the water and the arm ended in a bloated hand that was the hand of a freak. Then the face came. A swollen pulpy gray white mass without features, without eyes, without mouth. A blotch of gray dough, a nightmare with human hair on it." Yeesh.

What really got me about The Lady in the Lake, though, was how compact and designed it was, like a super buff horse. Marlowe never gets any private time at home or a moment for self-reflection. The story begins when he meets his client and ends when he closes the case. All in exactly 200 pages, not a word more. When I saw The Little Sister was about twenty pages longer, I thought it was just a slightly more intricate mystery. In the span of one book Chandler taught me to expect a strict formula, and twenty pages seemed like enough room for an extra body and maybe an extra killer to pin it on. Not so, it turns out.

The Little Sister isn't one of the Marlowe novels that gets talked about very often (those would be The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye, none of which I've read, although I plan to) and whether that's because it's one of his weaker efforts or just because it's a weird fucking book I'm afraid I can't say. Written six years after The Lady in the Lake, in which time Chandler's wife fell ill and a series of his scripts were rejected by Hollywood, The Little Sister is an angrier and more meandering novel with a mystery I couldn't explain if I had the sparknotes laying in front of me.

The novel begins when a beautiful and naïve young girl from Kansas comes to Marlowe's office looking for her long-lost brother, but when the case leads Marlowe to Hollywood he starts getting depressed and Chandler finds something he can care about. It's not that any one thing's bugging him, but more an aimless kind of depression that pervades the whole of the novel. Most of his deductions are just dumb luck, and he covers up so much evidence that in the obligatory scene where the corrupt local police throw him in jail he totally deserves it. Here he's not an easy man to sympathize with. A couple of chapters--my favorites in the book--disregard the story entirely and focus on Marlowe's gnawing depression, his growing sense that nothing he does is worth living for. In one chapter where he comes back to his office drunk Chandler writes, "Let the telephone ring, please, Let there be somebody to call up and plug me into the human race again. Even a cop. Even a Maglashan. Nobody has to like me. I just want to get off this frozen star." It's an overwhelming depression that exists on a level over the story and haunts every word. As a detective novel it's forgettable, but as an excruciatingly personal analysis of depression and class warfare? Ding ding ding.(less)

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Aug 12, 2011 Sketchbook rated it 4 of 5 stars

Written in the late '40s when RC was sick of Hollywood and
depressed about his wife's health (she was 17 years older),
RC was fretful and feeling more insolent than usual. So he used
Movieland as his setting. The titular sister, from the midwest,
lands in SoCal looking for her missing brother as, we later
learn, they both want to blackmail their Almost Famous Sis
who's in Pix. From real life RC borrows a scandal involving
mobster Bugsy Siegel who was allowed out of prison for a few
days to visit his...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Ian Tregillis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hmm. Maybe 3.5 for this one?

Definitely 4 for the sentence level craft. Wonderful lines like, "The room was full of silence like a fallen cake." And the first chapter is perhaps the best first chapter of the Marlowe novels I've read thusfar. This one is snappier and funnier than some of the others (though they all have their funny moments, thanks to Marlowe's quick sardonic wit). Say what one must about his characterization, but Chandler knew how to string words together.

As for that characteriza...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

"Good night, amigo. I wear black because I am beautiful and wicked--- and lost."

I stood up. She leaned back and a pulse beat in her throat. She was exquisite, she was dark, she was deadly. Utterly beyond the moral laws of this or any world I could imagine. And nothing would touch her, not even the law. i>
____

This is the weakest Marlowe book that I have read to date. It has all the elements of a good, pulpy, shoot-em-in-the-kneecaps noir, but the elements refused... to do... something. What is...more

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May 22, 2011 Teresa rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Eveybody

Shelves: 52-books-in-2011

I first read this book over twenty years ago. It has remained with me ever since and this re-reading has just confirmed it as one of the best books I have ever read. Raymond Chandler makes the English language sing. It is putty in his hands and he moulds it into sounds and shapes that captivate the imagination and send shivers down my backbone. This is one of the few times I wished I had the ebook version rather than a hardback book as so often I found myself wanting to highlight and share a sen...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Michael Battaglia rated it 5 of 5 stars

How Marlowe doesn't cringe every time someone walks through his door I have no idea. He must have deadened that reflex or has a thirst for putting himself through the wringer. What always seems to distinguish him isn't that he's the smartest detective in the city, or the fastest draw, or even the toughest, but the one with the most stamina and a good sense of moral timing, knowing when there's a need to hurry and knowing when it's just better to stand back and let events take their inevitable co...more How Marlowe doesn't cringe every time someone walks through his door I have no idea. He must have deadened that reflex or has a thirst for putting himself through the wringer. What always seems to distinguish him isn't that he's the smartest detective in the city, or the fastest draw, or even the toughest, but the one with the most stamina and a good sense of moral timing, knowing when there's a need to hurry and knowing when it's just better to stand back and let events take their inevitable course.

This, however, is the first one where he feels honesty tired. In the earlier novels, Marlowe never seemed to evoke a specific age. He had enough experience to not be a young man but wasn't ready to call himself an old man either, but this novel has the first signs that some metaphorical greys are starting to show at the edges of the hair. There's more of a sense of troubled inertia, of a need to see this through because no one else really wants to, including him. He feels more duty bound in this one, especially since nobody seems to like him very much and he's caught between conflicting forces, all of whom would like him to pitch for their side. Except Marlowe prefers his own. Even if it's rather lonely there.

This was Chandler's first novel in about five or six years and the early chapters do show signs of him shaking off some rust. There's a visit by the titular little sister, a girl from a small town looking for her brother who vanished in the big city and may have been caught up in some unsavory business (clearly through no fault of his own). Before long, the trail has led Marlowe to places that aren't quite the beach and he continues his streak of being a magnet for corpses, stumbling upon one after the other until even the police have to start wondering it's a one man walking plague. But it becomes clear that the brother is in trouble and the trouble may have to do with a picture taken of an up and coming starlet with a reputed mobster, one who was supposed to be in jail.

As I said, some of the earlier scenes feel forced, especially the banter between Marlowe and the little sister and chunks of it have the sound of being on auto-pilot, Marlowe saying all the right things but not quite having the snap that it normally does. However, once a target is found and the bodies start stacking up, the book suddenly gains a laser beam focus, with the lens directly on the Hollywood studios. Chandler had apparently spent some time doing screenplays in Hollywood and was raring to adapt the good and the bad he experienced into the novel (mostly the bad, by the looks of it). Continuing the notion that taking Marlowe out of his comfort zone makes for better reading, Hollywood comes across as another planet, one where everyone speaks the same language but is twice as seedy and twice as glitzy. Everyone is covered is layers, no one can be accessed and the assumption from the start is people are lying about lying, unless money is involved and especially if money is involved.

The end result still has a bit too much sprawl to it, becoming blurry at the edges and anyone trying to follow the twists and turns of the plot may start to feel like how the police do, half a step behind at all moments, as motivations shift when new information comes to light and nobody good or bad is what they seem at first glance. Along the way he finds time not only for an array of harrowing scenes (the doctor's office, for one, and the heavy sense of doom that precedes his conversations with the police) but surprising introspection, the weariness of a man who has treaded on his own shadow one too many times coming through with a palpable ache, giving rise to some of the book's best scenes (the justly famed "Marlowe, you're not human tonight" sequence, among others), the feel of a man who having his back against the wall would be an improvement of his situation. It works best when Chandler illustrates all the moving parts of the various factions infesting the city, with Marlowe as their unbending intersection, and watching him navigate everyone being out to get him for different reasons (the chats with the police have a racing tension, the sense that not only is Marlowe playing with fire, he just doesn't care anymore because he figures he's cooked anyway, and the police walking the line between wanting to pump him for information and just beat the living daylights out of him because he's made them look silly) gives the impression of someone trying to find a balance before it all collapses on top of him.

This makes the plot become gloriously layered and complicated but for once all the convolutions nearly do the novel in, forcing you to merely ride the wave of the plot instead of seeing it interlock and become revelatory, scraping the worst paint away to find its even uglier underneath. The impact becomes diluted and if not for Marlowe's personality and the emotional honesty of the narration shining through (even without explicitly telling us how he feels, Chandler's great gift), the novel might feel like a regular detective story (although at one point it gloriously flirts with becoming a noir version of "Reefer Madness"). After a while I gave up on trying to solve it as Chandler seemed intent on piecing together scattered tangents into the least likely outcome, then backtracking to have it all make sense. It hardly matters, with Marlowe at the center. Inhabited and intent, tired and pressing on, swayed not by sexy women or silly women, undaunted by guns or repeated blows to the head, he finds there are people with honor and people without it and sometimes who is who winds up being the most surprising deduction of all.(less)

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Jun 04, 2010 Conor Olmstead rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

So I picked up this book because I wanted a change of pace after devoting so many hours to a good comedy. I figured a good mystery would be a nice change, and when you want a good classic mystery you always go to Raymond Chandler. Both my parents were telling me that "The Little Sister" was one of there all time favorite Chandler mysteries. And story wise they were spot on!

The biggest drawback to this though was the fact that it was an audiobook. The audiobook was narrated by the famous actor El...more

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Jan 18, 2010 Nikki rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime, mystery

Raymond Chandler's writing is still the most amazing stuff I've ever seen, don't get me wrong. This book seemed a little more worn than the others -- or maybe I'm getting more used to it. I still love the voice he's given to Marlowe, and I still think his work is probably worth reading no matter what, but this one didn't fill me with glee. It's easy to read, it's atmospheric, the actual writing is good, but... the plot is incoherent (no surprises there) and the characters, particularly the women...more

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May 22, 2011 Cliff rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

'The Little Sister' is a detective story set in 1930s or 1940s Los Angeles. The detective character, Phillip Marlowe, is an alcoholic, chain smoking, depressive misogynist. All the other characters are similarly world-weary wise-guys whose main form of emotional engagement is to practise one-liners on each another. There are six murders and one character goes mad. The book should be a very bleak read, but it comes across as refreshing and funny.

Marlowe's saving grace is his incorruptibility. Be...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Cathy DuPont rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: noir fans, hard boiled fans

Turn left; now go 3.15 miles south and make a U-turn back .34 miles; go right 5.34 miles; and on and on. That was how this hard-boiled noir classic read for me from about half way through to the end. When I thought I had everything in its right place, who did what to whom and why, everything got jumbled again and I’m back to square one and not sure who did what in the last 20 pages I read. It was a very complex novel but an excellent example of my favorite genre from one of my favorite writers a...more Turn left; now go 3.15 miles south and make a U-turn back .34 miles; go right 5.34 miles; and on and on. That was how this hard-boiled noir classic read for me from about half way through to the end. When I thought I had everything in its right place, who did what to whom and why, everything got jumbled again and I’m back to square one and not sure who did what in the last 20 pages I read. It was a very complex novel but an excellent example of my favorite genre from one of my favorite writers and the creator of noir, Raymond Chandler.

The Little Sister is literally that, and named, hold on to your seat, Orfamay Quest from Manhattan. That’s not New York, folks, Manhattan, Kansas. That’s Miss Quest, thank you very much and on her "smooth brown hair was a hat that had been taken from its mother too young.” And of course she considers Marlowe crude and ungentlemanly.

She’s in the big city of LA looking for her missing brother. Her and mom, back home, have allocated the big sum of $20 to hire a private eye to find him. Marlowe, with his big heart, is just the guy to move into action because, in part, he’s just bored.

The book opens when he’s eyeing a bluebottle fly waiting for the fly to “sit down…he just wanted to do wing-overs and sing the prologue to Pagliacci. I had the fly swatter poised in midair and I was all set.” That’s boredom, Philip Marlowe’s boredom anyhow.

Famous for providing vivid color in words, in this book Chandler zeros in on the underbelly of Hollywood including thugs, starlets and cops who will do just about anything to close a case. Some cops anyhow. And the up and coming actress and her reputation must be protected at any cost due to the potential money she can make for ‘the company.’ People are being stabbed to death regularly with a filed ice pick and dying other ways, too. That’s just a small slice of this multi-layered cake of a book.

Although it’s not considered Chandler’s best effort, it was satisfying to me especially for the multitude of ways Chandler describes the mouth and lips of the many characters. Here’s an example, “I put my hand up and rubbed my lip. My mouth had too many teeth in it.” And “his tongue pushed out his lower lip.” My favorite though is his describing the lips pulled back tight showing the little small teeth. When he talks like that, I just ‘see’ it and it just makes me all aflutter.

His use of the English lanuage cannot be compared to another writer and many writers name him as being influential in their desire to write. High compliment indeed.

Was looking at books from my ‘to read’ stack and reading the back of one book I came across the words ‘noir’ and ‘hard-boiled.’ Going to pass it up for another in the stack. I just finished a Raymond Chandler, the writer who created the genre...just finished with the real deal so I’ll wait awhile for any wannabe hard-boiled noirs.

(less)

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Apr 30, 2013 Nick Jones rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Raymond Chandler was the most respected of the old American thriller writers...and maybe the most respectable. The Penguin editions of his work used to have a quotation from Auden praising the novels for being more than crime...and wasn’t Sartre a fan? Philip Marlowe as existential hero, or something...although I’ve never been sure what that means. The Little Sister has the convoluted private detective plot we should expect; typically for Chandler, Marlowe investigates one case, events pull him...more Raymond Chandler was the most respected of the old American thriller writers...and maybe the most respectable. The Penguin editions of his work used to have a quotation from Auden praising the novels for being more than crime...and wasn’t Sartre a fan? Philip Marlowe as existential hero, or something...although I’ve never been sure what that means. The Little Sister has the convoluted private detective plot we should expect; typically for Chandler, Marlowe investigates one case, events pull him into another case, but they turn out to be linked. Everything is explained at the end, but, unlike the whodunit where the solution is the purpose of the work, for Chandler the process of detection is what is important, Marlowe moving through the case and through the novel...which is maybe why, even after the explanations, the reader is often left wondering, ‘What the hell was that about?’ What marks Chandler out is his literary gloss: there is a certain sophistication about his prose lacking in contemporary pulp writers. A lot of this is in the wit, the amusing use of language...or, to put it another way, Marlowe is always making with the wisecracks. Of course, Marlowe can whack or shoot someone when needed (although he seems to get bashed around more than he bashes), but his relationship with the world is defined more by his wisecracks: he is the smartarse, able to protect himself and needle others through language...and we are invited to identify him, enjoy his wisecracks, share in a certain sense of superiority (but, unlike Marlowe, not get beaten up). Chandler tended to be liked by the political Left: he revealed the murkier goings on of the rich and powerful: in The Little Sister Marlowe sniffs around Hollywood and there is lots of nasty stuff going on in Hollywood. America and Hollywood as a society run on greed and money. But if the rich and powerful are just grasping after their own interests, so is everyone else...except Marlowe, who always does right because right is the good thing to do. If all these Hollywood sorts are corrupt (or, at least, almost all of them), an equal crime (or maybe a greater one) is that they are vulgar. They have got such bad taste. There is a certain snobbishness about Chandler and Marlowe, and we are invited to share Marlowe’s snobbishness, sneer at the grasping greedy common bunch: after all, we’ve got the wisecracks and the moral high ground.(less)

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Mar 13, 2013 Desmond rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: detective-noir, read-and-re-read

Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister is often ranked lower han his other novels like The Big Sleep and The High Window and this is unfortunate because here is some of Chandler's greatest prose ever.

Chandler's novels of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction are never "neat". Marlowe is just a man a bit too noble for his profession who finds himself witness to events that show people at their worst. He often is unable to halt a murder and when he does come to a solution he can be prone to l...more

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Jul 26, 2010 Patrick O'Neil rated it 3 of 5 stars

I didn't like The Little Sister as much as the rest of Raymond Chandler's books. Although it took me a while to figure out why, I realized it's because Marlowe was incredibly cynical. Not that Marlowe wasn't cynical before. No, he was always cynical. But in The Little Sister his cynicism has turned nasty. Like he's working his way through a mean streak. His internal monologues are drawn-out tirades on humanity and Los Angeles. I like Marlowe a little more grounded, less burned out, less bitchy....more

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Jan 28, 2013 Robin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

Had this book been written by anyone else I would rate 2 stars instead of 3, but Chandler's writing rates a star all its own. It's clear, sharp, concise and clean, for all he writes about dirty things.

The girl of the title hires Marlowe to find her brother, and somehow we're plunged into pot-peddling, blackmail and ice-pick murders. We meet gangsters (of course), the smarmiest Hollywood types and a sadistic brute of a cop. Marlowe even acts slightly out of character and makes a mistake. He smoke...more Had this book been written by anyone else I would rate 2 stars instead of 3, but Chandler's writing rates a star all its own. It's clear, sharp, concise and clean, for all he writes about dirty things.

The girl of the title hires Marlowe to find her brother, and somehow we're plunged into pot-peddling, blackmail and ice-pick murders. We meet gangsters (of course), the smarmiest Hollywood types and a sadistic brute of a cop. Marlowe even acts slightly out of character and makes a mistake. He smokes a cigarette from someone else's pack. Oh no, it's not a reefer -- it's laced with cyanide!

(I have got to stop going into these stories thinking people will act nicely ....)

As Chandler keeps the reader neatly in Marlowe's thinking, throughout the book nothing makes sense and nothing fits together. It's like a 3000 piece jigsaw puzzle where by luck you get a few to hook together, but you look at the picture on the cover and wonder, 'Did the wrong pieces get packed in this box?' Granted, we're not overloaded with clues to figure out the sequence before Marlowe does, and like most mysteries a particular person's motive only becomes clear in hindsight. But by the very last pages Marlowe (and we) are able see the details and motives dovetail perfectly together and we're satisfied to see the pattern.

It's a good little hard-boiled story.

There were a few elements, though --

1) When did Philip Marlowe all of a sudden become sexy? Seems like every dame he meets, either she's ready to fall all over him, or he's ready to fall all over her.

2) Maybe it's just me, but whenever Mavis Weld spoke, I kept hearing the voice of Claire Trevor. (For those of you who don't know, in the '44 movie Murder, My Sweet, Trevor played a femme fatale from another Chandler story -- and played it damn well!) I wondered if Chandler watched the movie a lot when he wrote Mavis' scenes. Hearing Trevor's voice kept pulling me out of this story.

And last, a definite pet peeve --

3) What's with the names Orfamay and Orrin Quest! Erg, I shuddered and blipped by every time I had to read those words ... oh why couldn't Chandler have named them something ELSE?!(less)

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Sep 09, 2012 Ian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading and browsing through all of the previous posts about this novel I am not sure that I can add anything new or useful, however, I will try.

This is not the strongest or the best Marlowe, however, as with its brethren, it is not so much the story, but the dialogue and the setting. Marlowe's witty ("crack wise") views on life, and his surrounds, plus the colourful (I believe that is the term) characters that he meets, and interacts with, make this again a humorous dark read.

Every Marl...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Brett Adams rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Yet another very enjoyable stay with PI Phillip Marlowe.

Just some lines that tickled my fancy:

"On the smooth brown hair was a hat that had been taken from its mother too young."

"Never the time and place and the loved one all together," I said.
"What's that?" She tried to throw me out with the point of her chin, but even she wasn't that good.
"Browning. The poet, not the automatic. I feel sure you'd prefer the automatic."

"I'm his protection, pal. I gotta protect him. A guy like Sherry can't see eve...more

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May 16, 2011 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle

Lots of twists and turns to this classic hard-boiled detective novel. I saw some of them coming, others I didn't. I think I'll like Marlowe just fine as an interlude between some of my other reads, but I'm far less interested in this type novel as a steady diet.

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Jan 11, 2011 Jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This, my first Raymond Chandler, was a surprise gift from my wife. I'm not much for murder mysteries or dark suspense, but this one really worked. I enjoyed most of all the witty mordant descriptions of people, places, and social graces. Every few pages, something leaps out at you so well written that you wish you had thought of it first. The plot was not the star here, for me. It was intricate enough, but there wasn't a big a payoff reveal as I was expecting. Also, some odd sex scenes: women ke...more

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Nov 19, 2009 Kristopher rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, audio-book

This was an audio book recording of a BBC radio adaptation of Little Sister, so honestly, I don't know if I should count as a book at all.

Only an 90 minutes long for a 200+ page book, it must have been pared down considerably. I doubt much plot was left out since Chandler's plots tend to be like houses of cards, you can't take one element out without the whole thing falling down. But it had very little of his elaborate, trademark description was evident.

Th story itself was okay, but not great....more

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Feb 14, 2011 Dr.Srinivas Prasad Veeraraghavan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another incredibly difficult book to analyse objectively but all things considered, this deserves a 4-Star rating.

The plot is as convoluted as Meat slop in San Quentin and even by Chandleresque standards, almost impossible to keep track of. Marlowe is the epitome of cynical cool in literature but in this one,the cynicism scythes through the enjoyable levels and enters a harsher,almost repugnant universe.

Despite all these, Chandler's prose is as sharp as a pointed steel blade jutting out menacin...more

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Jun 10, 2011 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: hard-boiled, mystery, crime, book-club-others, pulp, detective, 1940s

What seems like an easy case of finding a missing person turns out spiral out of control for Private Investigator Philip Marlowe, leading him into a world full of gangsters, movie scarlets and dead bodies. While The Little Sister is not Raymond Chandler’s strongest piece of work, it is a great addition to the series, with Marlowe been witty and awesome as always. Marlowe is on the hunt for Orfamay Quest’s (yes Orfamay) missing brother Orrin; the Quest family is from Manhattan, Kansas a small tow...more

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Jan 17, 2010 Julia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-list, mystery

I took notes as I read The Little Sister, writing down the phrases I wanted to read to Will, the ones that made me laugh or reread in admiration. Raymond Chandler has a way of taking hardboiled language and turning it into poetry, and that's why I read his books.

It isn't because of the plot. Which is really what I should remember to take notes on. By the end of the story I had lost the plot line and even after a police interrogation and several key confessions, I don't quite know who did what. N...more

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Jun 24, 2009 hirtho rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: chandler

Goddammit!!! I'm 0/2 this week! Another of my favorite authors failing me, although this time at least it's with a more obscure work than a supposed masterpiece. I was really stoked on Marlowe being back in LA as the last one I read was Lady in the Lake where he takes on the hicks, and I prefer him in old-timey Los Angeles like in High Window or Farewell My Lovely. Better for this one to remain in obscurity as it's both by-the-numbers (for the most part) and uncomfortably contrived (in it's supp...more

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About Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.

In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In...more

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Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe, #2)

The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe, #4)

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“I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.” — 19 people liked it

“She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might,if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.” — 7 people liked it

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The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe #5)

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