'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. Being honest himself makes him a harsh judge of others. And there is sufficient human decency among the other characters that, in spite of the moral decadence that pervades Los Angeles as depicted by Chandler, justice prevails, the guilty are punished, and the innocent are spared.

Chandler's writing confirms my belief that the only difference between 'Literature' and 'genre fiction' is fashion. He turns out page after page of brilliantly original prose. My particular favourite is Marlowe's encounter with a film studio mogul in the early stages of dementia. It plays no part in advancing the plot but serves to illustrate the weird make-believe world of Hollywood that is central to the story. The dialogue (the story is told in the first person so a lot of the dialogue goes on inside Marlowe's head) is hilarious. Chandler's portrayal of the avaricious little sister is chilling.

The action moves along at a brisk pace. The plot unfolds well for about the first two thirds of the book, but towards the end is muddied by too many twists and turns. The conclusion is less than perfect, but good enough to put this in the first rank of detective novels.