The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5) (2024)

The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5), Raymond Chandler

The Little Sister is a 1949 novel by Raymond Chandler, his fifth featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe.

The story is set in Los Angeles in the late 1940's. The novel centers on the younger sister of a Hollywood starlet and has several scenes involving the film industry.

It was partly inspired by Chandler's experience working as a screenwriter in Hollywood and his low opinion of the industry and most of the people in it.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز پنجم ماه آوریل سال1998میلادی

عنوان: خواهر کوچیکه؛ نویسنده: ریموند چندلر، برگردان اسماعیل فصیح؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، سیمرغ، چاپ نخست سال1376، در274ص، شابک9646584004 ؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده ۀمریکا - سری ماجراهای «فلیپ مارلو» کتاب پنج - سده20م

دختر جوانی به نام «اورفمی کوشت»، به دفتر کار کارآگاه «مارلو» در «لوس‌ آنجلس»، مراجعه و از او می‌خواهد، برادرش «اروین» را، که مدتی پیش، برای کار به «کالیفرنیا» آمده، پیدا کند؛ «اروین» چند هفته پیش، پانسیون محل زندگی‌ خویش را، ترک کرده، و از محل کارش نیز، اخراج شده است؛ کارآگاه، برای کشف این معما، با رخدادها و ماجراهایی روبرو می‌شود؛ از این کتاب در سال1969میلادی، فیلمی به نام «مارلو» ساخته شده؛ که «بروس لی» نیز نقش کوچکی در آن ایفا کرده است؛

عنوان فیلم: مارلو؛ کارگردان: پل بوگارت؛ تهیه‌ کننده: سیدنی بکرمن؛ گابریل کاتزکا؛ نویسنده فیلمنامه: استرلینگ سیلیفنت؛ بر اساس رمان خواهر کوچیکه؛ اثر ریموند چندلر؛ بازیگران جیمز گارنر؛ گایل هانیکات؛ کارول اوکانر؛ ریتا مورنو؛ بروس لی؛ موسیقی پیتر متز؛ فیلم‌ برداری ویلیام اچ دانیلز؛ تدوین ژنه روگیرو؛ توزیع‌ کننده مترو گلدن مایر؛ تاریخ‌های انتشار: رو نوزدهم ماه سپتامبر سال1969میلادی (آلمان)؛ روز بیت و دوم ماه اکتبر سال1969میلادی (ایالات متحده)؛ مدت زمان96دقیقه؛ کشور سازنده فیلم ایالات متحده؛ زبان انگلیسی؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 12/01/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 11/10/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe , they are an iconic pair you cannot separate or wish to, the master writer and the fictional character more real than some bipeds. The flavor of Los Angeles in the 1940's you could almost taste, and bringing Hollywood into the mixture soaks the atmosphere in tinsel, cheap it may be yet L.A. wouldn't be the same without the glamour and the vulgar. Add a murder mystery and Chandler who knew the business that built the city, he worked in the studio system ( as a screenwriter) and disliked greatly. A young apparently innocent looking girl from Manhattan, Kansas Orfamay Quest has a job for Mr. Marlowe find her missing older brother Orrin involved in an illicit trade. Miss Quest is not what she appears to be, pretending runs in the family and she is the best one of them. Philip doesn't locate big brother in his seedy apartment but discovers dead bodies everywhere he looks and the Los Angeles police are not happy far from it, Lieutenant Christy French and partner Fred Beifus, they give the detective a rough reception at their downtown headquarters, ( the Bay City boys also hate him and participate in the festivities ) Orrin works for a criminal doctor Lagardie after losing his legitimate work in Bay City ( Santa Monica). The Hollywood actress and rising movie star Mavis Weld is the sister of both Orrin and Orfamay a very good friend of a gangster Steegrave trying to go strait but having difficulties, she is being blackmailed. Her studio has high hopes for her and will do anything to shield their investment. She is ambitious, has become corrupt in the system like many others and shows contempt for Marlowe which the gumshoe doesn't mind he likes the view . Minor star Dolores Gonzales also is in the plot and likes Mr. Marlowe a lot, she wants to protect Marvis, still the sleaze permeates all, the artificial climate takes a toll. Chandler gives this novel another jolt of entertainment, with a hard-boiled detective as only he could create, the words flow cynically, the killings abound yet this is his world which the writer knew intimately, drugs, prostitution, failures of the discarded actors that the film industry wishes to hide , however he lived in the muck and we benefit from his experiences.The fans will enjoy this and mystery aficionados too, there was only one Raymond Chandler and the public is grateful...

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 Sister almost as much as Farewell, My Lovely but not as much as The Big Sleep. Chandler's simile-ridden prose pushes Marlowe from one sordid event to the next, making the bloody trip as pleasurable as a walk on the beach.

As is usual for a Chandler book, the plot meanders all over the place. Marlowe takes a kicking but keeps pushing his way forward, solving the case through a combination of luck, good detective work, and top notch dialog.

The case looked simple when it was just Ormafay looking for Orrin. Throw in the blackmail angle with Mavis Weld, some thug named Steelgrave, and people getting murdered with ice picks to the neck every other chapter and I had no idea where things were going for a good portion of the book.

The trip to the end was confusing but quite pleasurable due to Chandler's sublime prose. I lost track of all the one-liners I wanted to remember. "His nose had been broken and set but hadn't ever been a collector's item" is the first one that springs to mind.

I know I saw it with every Raymond Chandler book I review but this is a must read for noir and detective fiction fans. It's an easy four stars.

"She was a small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses. She had no make-up, no lipstick and no jewelry. The rimless glasses gave her that librarian's look." But, Marlowe, you surely must know what she would look like without the glasses, wearing her hair loose and a little make-up and jewelry. Beware! A femme fatale in hiding. This has always remained my very favorite Raymond Chandler novel.

And as far as The Little Sister goes, there is more than just one femme fatale. And maybe, according to Raymond Chandler, Hollywood itself is the ultimate femme fatale. Having his face rubbed in Hollywood culture (or anti-culture), Philip Marlowe turns existential. I urge you to read for yourself to see if the concluding chapter amounts to a happy ending. Hint: the novel does not have a Hollywood ending.

“I looked in the mirror in the morning. Yep, it was me.”

The fifth in Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlow detective series, The Little Sister is the second book (the first is a reread of The Day of the Locust) I have read in a week on the allure and despair and destruction of Hollywood. And while I love film and usually do watch the Academy Awards in part to get psyched to see all the films I missed, I missed The Academy Awards this year, missing two Black millionaires involved in a kind of live cartoon violence to help distract us from the violence of places like my Chicago or Ukraine, where real suffering is taking place on a daily basis.

The Day of the Locust is a grimly surreal story, and so you would think the wise-cracking Marlowe would be a complete contrast, but I think it is the grimmest (and thus possibly least favorite) of the Chandler works. As with Locust, it is a story of American striving, with the image of ambitious women at the center who want fame and fortune and all that red carpet glam and end up as bit players in B movies and--if they are lucky, as they see it--high up the sex work ladder to call girl status. The plot feels like it owes something to The Maltese Falcon with a large crook and his skinny sidekick, but in the main it shows a more-than-usually bitter Marlowe and desperate women.

Though the writing is clever and witty and funny and lyrical at times:

“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”

“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.”

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

“Leave us do the thinking, sweetheart. It takes equipment.”

But his focus is in the main this scathing social critique:

“Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant glamour queen out of a drab little wench who ought to be ironing a truck driver's shirts, a he-man hero with shining eyes and brilliant smile reeking of sexual charm out of some overgrown kid who was meant to go to work with a lunch-box. Out of a Texas car hop with the literacy of a character in a comic strip it will make an international courtesan, married six times to six millionaires and so blasé and decadent at the end of it that her idea of a thrill is to seduce a furniture-mover in a sweaty undershirt.”

“. . . the look of men who are poor and yet proud of their power, watching always for ways to make it felt, to shove it into you and twist it and grin and watch you squirm, ruthless without malice, cruel and yet not always unkind. What would you expect them to be? Civilization had no meaning for them. All they saw of it was the failures, the dirt, the dregs, the aberrations and the disgust.”

And of the crime?

“It could have been a beautiful friendship,” Beifus said with a sigh. “Except for the ice pick, of course.”

It’s a novel with a fine balance of wit and grime. With the fluids of booze and lust always fueling the action.

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 dentist...see, it's LA where anything goes. Forget reel life.

As Capote said: there are typists and there are writers. RC was most gloriously A Writer. "California - the most of everything and the best of nothing. I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living-room that had been closed too long. More wind-blown hair and sunglasses and attitudes and pseudo-refined voices and water-front morals."
Our man Marlowe goes to the movies and sees The Sister in a featured role: "If she had been ten times better half her scenes would have been yanked out to protect the star." (RC claims this is what happened to featured Martha Vickers to protect Bacall in "The Big Sleep".) Oh, yes, show biz: "If these people didn't live intense and disordered lives, they wouldn't be able to catch emotions in flight and imprint them on a few feet of celluloid."

Reviewing for The Tatler, 1949, Elizabeth Bowen wrote that "no consideration of modern American literature ought to exclude Raymond Chandler."

Dorothy, You're Not in Kansas Anymore

"The Little Sister" continues Chandler's Philip Marlowe franchise, a private eye series that became the mold for so many private eyes that followed in the succeeding decades. Chandler had the knack of combining the gritty realism and day to day language if the streets with a witty prose that sometimes had no match in the way he could turn a phrase.

Chandler used his alter ego Marlowe to poke fun at stereotypes of people. And there's no better example of that than the client who waltzes into his office, all innocent schoolgirl from small time Kansas, all prim and proper, and librarian-like. Marlowe pokes fun at her over and over, not buying her wild-eyed innocence. Not buying her story about her Bible-reading brother and why he's disappeared.

Chandler does this again and again through this series which is worth rereading more than once. He keeps poking at caricatures of people, particularly his clients and their families. And often when you scratch the surface, there's more to people than you'd assume. In the end, people are far more complex than you'd think at first glance.

Once again, Chandler gives us a complex, headturning plot that doesn't make sense until the end. But the end when it all comes together is fully satisfying.

Mostly a masterpiece: 5-stars for the first 2/3 of the book, his best ever work, which then sadly rushes into the overly complex morass of a resolution. Chandler's final denouement of the villains and their actions seems rushed in places, and unclear in others. You will eventually follow and understand, but it's a lot of work.

Marlowe expresses this towards the end:
Sometimes when I’m low I try to reason it out. But it gets too complicated. The whole damn case was that way. There was never a point where I could do the natural obvious thing without stopping to rack my head dizzy with figuring how it would affect somebody I owed something to.

As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.

What's most amazing about the prose in this book is how balanced it is, how smooth the pacing, how it flows right up to the edge of being surreal... but Marlowe's intelligence keeps it real and immediate. Fabulous!

And, perhaps the most surprising thing about the language here is how modern it is, so many phrases and expressions have penetrated our daily usage, even now. Chandler's prose just flows from the page and into our minds. It's natural rhythm and pacing are extraordinary.

The women / femme fatales in the book are strong characters, each an individual persona, each driven by familiar needs and pasts, each desperately trying to manipulate Marlowe to their own perceived goals.

The first 2/3 of the book presents clues and some red herrings, some misdirections, but bit by bit the clues fit together, drawing you into Marlowe's world, building a picture of crimes in your mind. Chandler must have gotten tired of the story at some point, because the last 1/3 is extraordinarily complex and this leads to the story feeling rushed and quite confusing. It's all there, but just kind of thrown at you at the end. Too bad.

You don’t think I’m doing this for any twenty bucks, do you?”
She gave me a level, suddenly cool stare. “Then why?”
Then when I didn’t answer she added, “Because spring is in the air?”
I still didn’t answer. She blushed a little. Then she giggled. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was just plain bored with doing nothing. Perhaps it was the spring too. And something in her eyes that was much older than Manhattan, Kansas.

-

She relaxed and let her head go back and her lips open a little. “I suppose you do this to all the clients,” she said softly. Her hands now had dropped to her sides. The bag whacked against my leg. She leaned her weight on my arm. If she wanted me to let go of her, she had her signals mixed.
“I just didn’t want you to lose your balance,” I said.
“I knew you were the thoughtful type.” She relaxed still more. Her head went back now. Her upper lids drooped, fluttered a bit and her lips came open a little farther. On them appeared the faint provocative smile that nobody ever has to teach them.

32% ... Wow. Chapter 13 is incredibly good. The prose is wonderful, beautifully descriptive, and we see Marlowe's dissatisfaction with himself and with Los Angeles clearly. This is, I think, the single best chapter in all of Chandler. Wonderful.

Tired men in dusty coups and sedans winced and tightened their grip on the wheel and ploughed on north and west towards home and dinner, an evening with the sports page, the blatting of the radio, the whining of their spoiled children and the gabble of their silly wives. I drove on past the gaudy neons and the false fronts behind them, the sleazy hamburger joints that look like palaces under the colors, the circular drive-ins as gay as circuses with the chipper hard-eyed carhops, the brilliant counters, and the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad. Great double trucks rumbled down over Sepulveda from Wilmington and San Pedro and crossed towards the Ridge Route, starting up in low-low from the traffic lights with a growl of lions in the zoo.

sleazy (adj.)
1640s, "downy, fuzzy," later "flimsy, unsubstantial" (1660s), of unknown origin; one theory is that it is a corruption of Silesia, the German region, where thin linen or cotton fabric was made for export. Silesia in reference to cloth is attested in English from 1670s; and sleazy as an abbreviated form is attested from 1670), but OED is against this. Sense of "sordid" is from 1941. Related: Sleazily; sleaziness.

In this book, we see Marlowe attracted the femme fatales, and helplessly smitten by one. He realises this, but can't seem to help himself, doesn’t want to help himself, although he knows a romance could never work. Still he invests his heart. Very poignant, very sad.

“They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.”

Chandler was 64 then, and his wife was 16 years older. I also understand that Chandler's wife was quite ill during his writing of this book, and you can feel his fatigue with life in L.A. clearly, his rants against the tinsel, throwaway culture that L.A. had become, the poison of money and Hollywood, and his nostalgia for an older version of L.A., somehow cleaner and more hopeful in his mind.

The studio cop at the semicircular glassed-in desk put down his telephone and scribbled on a pad. He tore off the sheet and pushed in through the narrow slit ....
“Thanks. Is this bullet-proof glass?”
“Sure. Why?”
“I just wondered,” I said. “I never heard of anybody shooting his way into the picture business.”
Behind me somebody snickered. I turned to look at a girl in slacks with a red carnation behind her ear. She was grinning.
“Oh brother, if a gun was all it took.”

Notes:
20.0% ... Chandler is smokin' here. He hard boils it, then brings out the blow torch. Awesome.

31.0% ... I would have loved to see Bogart in a movie of this. Wow!

32.0% ... Wow. Chapter 13 is incredibly good. The very best chapter in all of Chandler. Wonderful.

47.0% ... keeps getting better and better. Spectacular prose, complex plot, and deliciously entertaining characters.

.

Quinto libro de la saga Marlowe.
Como siempre, Chandler es brillante en el uso del símil: "Su cuello era moreno y elástico y su boca tan roja como un coche de bomberos sin estrenar"; "Me miró como si yo acabara de surgir del fondo del mar con una sirena ahogada debajo del brazo". Y así podría estar hasta el infinito. Chandler no tiene límites.
Una trama, en este caso, que parece sencilla y se convierte en una historia de gàngsters. Hasta que Marlowe descubre el pastel pasan muchos personajes. A parte del mismo Marlowe, la presencia femenina es destacable y diversa. Hay mujeres de todo tipo: tímida, atrevida, ligera, sensual. Y podría asegurar que todas ellas guardan un as bajo la manga. Ahí lo dejo.
Chandler critica duramente la sociedad norteamericana de la época, la corrupción policial y la depravación y la destrucción de su querida L. A.: "fumando y contemplando las pálidas estrellas, que son lo bastante listas como para mantenerse alejadas de Hollywood".

Fifth book in the Marlowe saga.
As always, Chandler is brilliant in the use of the simile: "Her neck was dark and elastic and his mouth as red as a brand-new fire engine"; "He looked at me as if I had just emerged from the bottom of the sea with a drowned mermaid under my arm." And so it could be to infinity. Chandler has no limits.
A plot, in this case, that seems simple and becomes a story of gangsters. Until Marlowe discovers the plan many characters pass. Apart from Marlowe himself, the female presence is remarkable and diverse. There are women of all kinds: shy, daring, light, sensual. And I could assure that all of them have an ace up their sleeve. I leave it there.
Chandler sharply criticizes American society at the time, police corruption, and the depravity and destruction of his beloved L.A.: "smoking and gazing at the pale stars, who are smart enough to stay away from Hollywood."

Ah, Philip Marlowe, Private Detective...another crime noir story set in Los Angeles and involving the Hollywood crowd. Enjoyable for an oldies classic read.

One doesn't read Chandler for plot (which is fortunate, because the plot here is nebulous). One reads Chandler for his wonderful noir descriptions, for the world-weary atmosphere, and for the beautiful sentences. For using sentences where Marlowe distinguishes between Browning the weapon and Browning the poet. Where he uses elegant similes to describe sordid business. I think that's the biggest draw for me: the gorgeous manipulation of the language juxtaposed with the sleazy subject matter.

It really struck me in the book how much of an alter ego Philip Marlowe was for his author. Marlowe smokes a pipe, something I see in many of the photos of Chandler. He consumes alcohol like his life depends on it. If he's not kissing some dame, he's got one throwing herself at him. Unfortunately for the women who would like to distract him, Marlowe sees through that ploy because he sees it so often. Poor women don't have much else to use to their advantage.

“Chandler was by 1931 a highly paid vice president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate, but his alcoholism, absenteeism, promiscuity with female employees, and threatened suicides contributed to his dismissal a year later.” (Wikipedia)

Sounds a lot like Marlowe (without the suicide attempts). I have to say that I'm kind of impressed that the Syndicate fired him. I have no idea how they treated the women that Chandler was promiscuous with, but I appreciate that the highly paid man got turfed instead of just gently smacked on the wrist.

Not up to the level of his first two Marlowe books, but still I enjoyed it a fair bit.

The fifth full-length novel featuring Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe opens with the private investigator bored nearly to death when a young woman named Orfamay Quest from Manhattan, Kansas comes into the office and asks Marlowe to find her older brother, Orrin. Orrin came out to California and has recently disappeared. Naturally, all the folks back home are very worried.

Orfamay appears to be a timid young woman who has led a very sheltered life and who is like a fish out of water in California. Naturally, though, behind that shy and mousy exterior, there lurks a potentially very sexy and beautiful young woman. She seems desperate and down on her luck, especially what with with poor Ma and Pa back home in Kansas wondering what has become of their son, so Marlowe takes the case for a fee of twenty bucks and starts with Orrin's last known address, a seedy hotel in Bay City, a fictional suburb. The brother has left the hotel but before Marlowe can get out of the dump, someone will be stabbed with an ice pick and Marlowe will already be in deep trouble.

As is usually the case in these novels, the bodies will continue to pile up. There's murder, blackmail, drugs, sex and a plot that will become convoluted almost to the point of being indecipherable. But who cares? As always, one reads a Raymond Chandler novel not for the plot, but for the characters and the great dialogue and narrative descriptions as, for example, when we first meet Orfamay:

"She didn't have to open her mouth for me to know who she was. And nobody ever looked less like Lady Macbeth. She was a small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses. She was wearing a brown tailor-made and from a strap over her shoulder hung one of those awkward-looking square bags that made you think of a Sister of Mercy taking first aid to the wounded. On the smooth brown hair was a had that had been taken from its mother too young. She had no make-up, no lipstick and no jewelry. The rimless glasses gave her that librarian's look."

Like all Raymond Chandler novels, this one is a great read and it's hard to imagine a fan of classic, hard-boiled crime novels that wouldn't love it.

Grit your teeth and enjoy the rough, bumpy ride.

Marlowe just can't leave well enough alone. He has to turn over every rock to see what nasty and dangerous things are hiding there. He also has to go out of his way to antagonize people. I bet that when he was a kid he was the one to poke hornets nests with a stick.

Raymond Chandler worked in Hollywood for awhile and didn't think much of it. In fact he apparently despised it. The Little Sister reflects this. Could be one reason this 1949 novel wasn't used as the basis for a movie until 1969's Marlowe starring James Garner.

This novel used similes that were long and round and thin, like a rattailed file that has been ground smooth.

This novel is a sort of sad whisper, like a mortitian asking for a down payment.
This novel had a low lingering voice with a sort of moist caress in it like a damp bath towl.
This novel felt like a nice leg.
This novel was brought up straight, like the wicked foreman of the Lazy Q.
This novel sounded like somebody putting aways saucepans.
This novel flashed like lightening.
This novel burned like dry ice.
This novel bounced me downstairs like a basketball.
This novel made my brain feel like a bucket of wet sand.
This novel spoke to me like a six-hundred dollar funeral.
This novel made a sort of high keening noise, like a couple of pansies fighting for a piece of silk.
This novel grew on me like scum on a water tank.
This novel burned like a hot iron.
This novel gave me the creeps. Like petting snakes.
This novel felt like four years on a road gang.
This novel had a jaw like a park bench.
This novel had eyes cloudy and grey like freezing water.
This novel was sad, like a fallen cake.
This novel's similies poured like water through the floodgagtes of a dam.
This novel fell on silence like a tired head on a swansdown pillow.
This novel made me laugh like a child trying to be supercilious at a playroom tea party.

I’m rereading all the Raymond Chandler Marlowe novels which, no surprise, I adore. Chandler is up there with Wodehouse in terms of guaranteed reading pleasure. So it was I came to The Little Sister (1949) (Philip Marlowe #5). Imagine my surprise and delight when I realised it was a Marlowe novel that had somehow passed me by, until now.

Usually Marlowe manages to rise above the corruption and phoniness of Los Angeles and behave like a 1940s Knight-errant. It's a very different Marlowe in The Little Sister. Here he's more downbeat, world weary, cynical and jaded.

Chandler had something of a love/hate relationship with Los Angeles and Hollywood. In The Little Sister it's more of a hate/hate relationship. One of the most memorable passages in the novel is a long soliloquy by Marlowe where he waxes philosophical about the emptiness and shallowness of Los Angeles and its residents. That section is repeatedly punctuated with Marlowe repeating the refrain: "You're not human tonight, Marlowe."

Chandler wrote this novel after working as a screenwriter for Paramount in Hollywood, and it reflects some of his experiences with and disdain for the film industry and particularly for Billy Wilder, his writing partner on Double Indemnity.

So, no surprise, Marlowe is even more jaundiced and world weary than ever. The plot seemingly more hard boiled than ever too. Perhaps not to everyone's taste, but I revelled in this most hard boiled of the Marlowe novels.

Elsewhere it's another convoluted plot which finally becomes clear, aligned to some truly memorable, venal and self serving characters: gangsters, starlets, crooked doctors, grizzled cops, wide eyed ingenues, blackmailers, grifters, dissolute jobsworths and so on. Many seem to be insane. It's no surprise that Marlowe is so disgusted and jaded.

I loved every minute.

5/5

More info....

The Little Sister is a classic detective novel by the master of hard-boiled crime

Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or leastways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable - though it's not long before he wishes he wasn't so sweet. You see, Orrin's trail leads Marlowe to luscious movie starlets, uppity gangsters, suspicious cops and corpses with ice picks jammed in their necks. When trouble comes calling, sometimes it's best to pretend to be out . . .

'Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph

'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times

'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess

Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction. His books include The Big Sleep, The Little Sister, Farewell, My Lovely, The Long Good-bye, The Lady in the Lake, Playback, Killer in the Rain, The High Window and Trouble is My Business.

CRITIQUE:.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Raymond Chandler's fifth novel is fuelled by anger and hatred towards Hollywood.

By the time it was published in 1949, Chandler had already been involved in four film projects as a scriptwriter, none of which he'd valued or enjoyed.

"The Little Sister" was Chandler's first completed novel in five years. It was based on the 1938 short story, "Bay City Blues". It seemed that he liked the novel as little as he liked Hollywood. He revealed in correspondence with the critic James Sandoe that it was "the only book of mine I have actively disliked...It was written in a bad mood and I think that comes through."

Chandler draws a stark contrast between the people of the film industry and the ordinary residents of Los Angeles.

As Marlowe drove past Studio City and Encino, -

"...there was nothing lonely about the trip. There never is on that road. Fast boys in stripped-down Fords shot in and out of the traffic streams, missing fenders by a sixteenth of an inch, but somehow always missing them. Tired men in dusty coupes and sedans winced and tightened their grip on the wheel and ploughed on north and west towards home and dinner, an evening with the sports page, the blatting of the radio, the whining of their spoiled children and the gabble of their silly wives. I drove on past the gaudy neons and the false fronts behind them, the sleazy hamburger joints that look like palaces under the colours, the circular drive-ins as gay as circuses with the chipper hard-eyed car-hops, the brilliant counters, and the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad...Behind Encino an occasional light winked from the hills through thick trees. The homes of screen stars, phooey. The veterans of a thousand beds. Hold it, Marlowe, you're not human tonight.

"The air got cooler. The highway narrowed. The cars were so few now that the headlights hurt. The grade rose against chalk walls and at the top a breeze, unbroken from the ocean, danced casually across the night.

"I ate dinner at a place near Thousand Oaks. Bad but quick. Feed 'em and throw 'em out. Lots of business...God knows why they want to eat here. They could do better at home out of a can. They're just restless. Like you. They have to get the car out and go somewhere. Sucker-bait for the racketeers that have taken over the restaurants. Here we go again. You're not human tonight, Marlowe...

"California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing. Here we go again. You're not human tonight, Marlowe."

"We went down three carpeted steps into an office that had everything in it but a swimming pool. It was two storeys high, surrounded by a balcony loaded with bookshelves. There was a concert grand Steinway in the corner and a lot of glass and bleached wood furniture and a desk about the size of a badminton court and chairs and couches and tables and a man lying on one of the couches with his coat off and his shirt open over a Charvet scarf you could have found in the dark by listening to it purr. A white cloth was over his eyes and forehead, and a lissom blonde girl was wringing out another in a silver bowl of ice water at a table beside him...The man was a big shapely guy with wavy dark hair and a strong brown face below the white cloth.

"After a moment, the man on the couch...got [a] cigarette waerily into his mouth and drew on it with the infinite languor of a decadent aristocrat mouldering in a ruined chateau."

Everybody else is a serf.

Mavis has no illusions:

"We're all bitches. Some smile more than others, that's all. Show business. There's something cheap about it. There always has been. There was a time when actors went in at the back door. Most of them still should. Great strain, great urgency, great hatred, and it comes out in nasty little scenes. They don't mean a thing...Cat talk."

Show business is just the latest and biggest racket.

Blackmail and Ice-Picks

When there's so much distance between the haves and the have nots, the poor and vulnerable can easily be tempted to part the haves from some of their funds, e.g., by blackmail. A compromising photograph of an actress and a gangster can jeopardise her bankability. It can imperil the studio's business model:

"Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant glamour queen out of a drab little wench who ought to be ironing a truck driver's shorts, a he-man hero with shining eyes and brilliant smile reeking of sexual charm out of some overgrown kid who was meant to go to work with a lunchbox. Out of a Texas car hop with the literacy of a character in a comic strip it will make an international courtesan, married six times to six millionaires and so blase and decadent at the end of it that her idea of a thrill is to seduce a furniture-mover in a sweaty under-shirt."

"by remote control it might even take a small-town prig...and make an ice-pick murderer out of him in a matter of months, elevating his simple meanness into the classic sadism of the multiple killer."

Of course, not every gangster appreciates being blackmailed, and they might be tempted to engage an associate to kill the blackmailer with an ice-pick.

I've never read a novel in which so many people were murdered with an ice-pick.

I had previously only associated them with the assassination of Leon Trotsky, but it turns out that that was actually an ice-axe.

Ice-picks were used in the days before refrigerators to break up blocks of ice. They were also used by Mafia associates and hit-men as a weapon. They could quickly kill somebody by puncturing their spinal cord.

Women Both Innocent and Guilty

A lot of women appeal to Marlowe throughout the novel, even if they're not exactly or wholly innocent. Even the apparently young and innocent ones turn guilty.

This leaves Marlowe with a dilemma, even if the women know how to handle themselves and have views of their own.

Mavis Weld's sister calls her "a sort of free and easy Hollywood babe that doesn't have very good morals." Mavis is the most materialistic. She refers to Marlowe as "a beat-up gumshoe with no yacht."

We know the supposedly young and innocent Orfamay Quest has turned, when she asks Marlowe to "take my glasses off". When she reaches a quick arm around his neck and starts to pull, "I kissed her. It was either that or slug her. She pushed her mouth hard at me for a long moment then quietly and very comfortably wriggled around in my arms and nestled. She let out a long easy sigh."

When Marlowe first meets Dolores Gonzales, he describes her as "a tall dark girl in jodphurs...Sexy was very faint praise for her. The jodphurs, like her hair, were coal black. She wore a white silk shirt with a scarlet scarf loose around her throat. It was not as vivid as her mouth. She held a long brown cigarette in a pair of tiny golden tweezers. The fingers holding it were more than adequately jewelled...Her nipples were as hard as rubies...It was a long time since she was a little girl."

Dolores (who convinces him that she thinks he's "so brave, so big...") prefers to wear ruby lips and black clothes:

"I wear black because I am beautiful and wicked - and lost...It is more exciting when I take my clothes off."

Dolores also has a pretty good insight into Marlowe:

"What a way you have with the girls...How the hell do you do it, wonderful? With doped cigarettes? It can't be your clothes or your money or your personality. You don't have any. You're not too young, nor too beautiful. You've seen your best days..."

"I wish you'd make up your mind whether you are giving me a (the? - sic) third degree or making love to me."

"If you're going to stand that close to me, maybe you'd better put some clothes on."

These invitations almost make up for the fact that he charges only $40 per day (plus expenses), and has trouble finding clients who will pay that much.

This novel definitely grew on me, despite (or perhaps because of) its loathing of show business. I was in a good mood well before I finished it, even if Chandler didn't feel the same.

SOUNDTRACK:

Robyn Hitchco*ck - "Raymond Chandler Evening"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndePT...

“Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant glamour queen out of a drab little wench who ought to be ironing a truck driver’s shirts, a he-man hero with shining eyes and brilliant smile reeking of sexual charm out of some overgrown kid who was meant to go to work with a lunchbox. Out of a Texas car hop with the literacy of a character in a comic strip it will make an international courtesan, married six times to six millionaires and so blasé and decadent at the end of it that her idea of a thrill is to seduce a furniture mover in a sweaty undershirt.”

A woman from small town Kansas travels to California and hires Marlowe to track down her missing brother. In his quest to locate the man in question, Chandler will take Marlowe into the world of Hollywood and the shady characters that occupy it.

In The Little Sister, Chandler packs about ten pounds of plot into a two pound sack. As many of his fans have said, trying to follow a Marlowe novel is about as simple as reading a road map upside down and backwards. Ice picks, gunshots and fist on face violence make up the fifth installment of Chandler’s signature series and while the plot twists hit harder than a flurry of punches to the solar plexus, it’s Chandler’s writing that once again blew me away.

Not known for having a positive worldview, Chandler is increasingly bitter this time around. Briefly working as a screenwriter in Tinseltown, certain experiences soured him on the whole industry. Through Marlowe, he muses on the whole damn state of California, hitting it with stinging criticism.

“California, the department store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.”

“I ate dinner at a place near Thousand Oaks. Bad but quick. Feed ‘em and throw ‘em out Lots of business. We can’t bother with you sitting over your second cup of coffee, mister. You’re using money space. See those people over there behind the rope They want to eat. Anyway they think they have to. God knows why they want to eat here. The could do better home out of a can.”

“They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.”

Despite his general dislike for most of the people he meets, Marlowe spends the entire novel manipulating evidence and tipping the scales in favor of others which makes the ending all that more shocking. If you saw it coming, I’ll bake you a dozen cookies.

I’m sad to see that I’m reaching the end of my Marlowe marathon. Two more Chandler-written novels remain with arguably the best of the best on the horizon. The Little Sister may not be sitting at the top but it’s certainly a worthy piece of Marlowe legacy.

Πρόκειται για ένα από τα πιο πρωτότυπα, ψυχογραφικά και 'καυστικά' αστυνομικά μυθιστόρηματα του Τσάντλερ (1949), το οποίο 'εγκαινιάζει' τα εγκλήματα με παγοκόφτη εμπνέοντας, ενδεχομένως, καί άλλους συγγραφείς όπως τον Ross McDonald στη 'Νεκροφόρα με τις ρίγες' (1962), αλλά και τον Τσάρλς Όσμπορν στο πολύκροτο βιβλίο του, 'Βασικό Ένστίκτο' (1992).

Την εποχή που το έγραψε ο Τσάντλερ είχε ξεκινήσει τη συνεργασία του με παραγωγούς και σκηνοθέτες του Χόλυγουντ, οι οποίοι τού είχαν αναθέσει τη συγγραφή σεναρίων για φιλόδοξες κινηματογραφικές ταινίες. Η δυσφορία του για τους 'μηχανισμούς' της βιομηχανίας του Χόλυγουντ, αλλά και οι ταραχώδεις σχέσεις του με σκηνοθέτες όπως ο Μπίλυ Ουάιλντερ αντικατοπ��ρίζονται σε πολλά σημεία του βιβλίου είτε με ιδιόμορφα 'καυστικό' χιούμορ είτε μέσω των 'εσωτερικών' συγκρούσεων και διαλόγων του Μάρλοου, ο οποίος, εδώ, είναι πιο αυθεντικός και ανθρώπινος από κάθε άλλη φορά.

Προβληματίζουν και αφοπλίζουν οι ειρωνικές περιγραφές των μεγάρων του Μπέβερλυ Χιλς και του Χόλυγουντ στα οποία κατοικούν άνθρωποι κενοί, ματαιόδοξοι και εγκλωβισμένοι στην εξωτερική εικόνα τους, όσο και η παρατήρηση του συγγραφέα ότι ένα τέτοιο νοσηρό περιβάλλον μπορεί κάποιον που επιθυμεί λίγο από αυτή τη δόξα είτε να τον υποδουλώσει είτε να τον μετατρέψει, ακόμα, και σε ψυχοπαθή δολοφόνο.

Σαν σημεία των καιρών, τότε, στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του '40, αναφέρει την έντονη χρήση και το εμπόριο μαριχουάνας, την παράνομη πώληση τηλεφωνικών αριθμών, την καθιέρωση των κόμικς ως μέσου ψυχαγωγίας, τις έντονες επιθέσεις που δεχόταν ο Τζ. Έντγκαρ Χούβερ λόγω της θέσης του ως διευθυντή του F.B.I., αλλά.... και το 'φλερτ' Ελλήνων μεταναστών στις Η.Π.Α. με τον υπόκοσμο και την παρανομία🤔.

Γενικά, πρόκειται για ένα αστυνομικό μυθιστόρημα που εκφράζει την εποχή του, αν όχι και λίγο τη δική μας, ασκεί μια ιδιαίτερη γοητεία στον αναγνώστη μέσω των έξυπνων και ενίοτε χιουμοριστικών διαλόγων του, και, κυρίως, αποδεικνύει ότι σχεδόν κανένας από τους βασικούς ήρωες δεν είναι αυτός που φαίνεται στην αρχή (ο ρόλος του θύτη και του θύματος εναλλάσονται συχνά). Ίσως, μπερδέψει η λύση του μυστηρίου λόγω των περίπλοκων λεπτομερειών, γεγονότων και κινήτρων, ωστόσο, το μυθιστόρημα αποτελεί μια σκληρή καταγραφή της μεταπολεμικής πραγματικότητας, αλλά και της απατηλής λάμψης της εφήμερης δόξας.

Βαθμός: 4,4/5 ή 8,8/10.

Rambling plot sometimes hard to follow, BUT the P.I. Marlowe bittersweet voice teems throughout. Famous metaphors work well. The wrap-up is pretty decent. This book skewers the Hollywood glitterati.

5/23/20 My comments from my first reading don't really change after my second reading. Marlowe mentions he's 37. I'd always pictured him as older, 50s maybe.

01/2015

This is going to be a very unpopular statement: I don't think Raymond Chandler is an amazing writer. Okay, fine, I think he's a good writer. But not amazing. I think he's loud, so many similes, comparisons, poetry. Uneven (some of his books I really like, some I don't).

This one is very hard to rate. So let's call it 4.5 stars. There are flaws. The plot really *is* too complex, as Marlowe himself admits. And at times, especially in the first half, there is an even deeper problem. Marlowe is (always has been and always will be; see Chandler's letter to D.J. Ibberson, dated April 19, 1951) 38, but the author himself at the time of writing was already 61 -- and, quite obviously, none too happy about it. That discrepancy of voice is sometimes too apparent. On the other hand, Little Sister contains some of the best and richest writing in Chandler's corpus. Some remarkable characters in this book, Toad, Steelgrave.... But one of the principal female characters (I won't pull a spoiler and tell you which one, except to say that Marlow himself points unequivocally to the falsity near the end) is less successful (in terms of being drawn in a totally convincing way).

In other words, the author's intervention shows too often through the cracks.

It is as if his art has reached a state of perfection, even as his personality and character have begun to crumble. And that gives to the whole a slightly false note.

This is a common problem, by the way, when one reaches, and then suddenly passes middle age.

Still, a wholly excellent book, despite its flaws.

This is yet another wonderful hard boiled, crime noir novel featuring the original gumshoe, Philip Marlowe. He's hired to find a young woman's missing brother but, this being a Chandler novel, nothing is ever that simple.

I think this may have been my favourite of the bunch, so far. I really liked how well Chandler expressed his protagonist's loneliness, ennui and overall vulnerability. I feel like I know Marlowe a lot better now, in a way that I didn't from reading the previous four books. Also, while he's still a bit of a git, I sympathise with him more after reading this volume.

All in all, this is a cracking good book and I enjoyed every minute of it.

“The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: "Philip Marlowe...Investigations." It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is locked, but next to it is another door with same legend which is not locked. Come on in - there's nobody here but me and a big bluebottle fly.”

The fifth novel in the celebrated Philip Marlowe series is set in Hollywood, a story of struggling actors mired in a cesspool of corruption and despair, living in the murky shadowlands of the powerful executives and agents. The plot delivers more than its fair share of twists and turns, with plenty of blame to go around, and the prose and dialogue crackle despite turning 75 years old this year. Chandler saved his vitriolic best for Tinseltown, probably based on his own uneven experiences within the studio elite.

“Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant glamour queen out of a drab little wench who ought to be ironing a truck driver's shirts, a he-man hero with shining eyes and brilliant smile reeking of sexual charm out of some overgrown kid who was meant to go to work with a lunch-box. Out of a Texas car hop with the literacy of a character in a comic strip it will make an international courtesan, married six times to six millionaires and so blasé and decadent at the end of it that her idea of a thrill is to seduce a furniture-mover in a sweaty undershirt.”

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 sh*ts 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 sh*ts about something doesn't give you those sorts of liberties. Would Marlowe be that sloppy?

What beautiful prose. This might be a favorite, if not my very favorite Chandler novel. The novel is what happens when Kansas meets Hollywood, winding up with a couple of needles stuck in her after the first hour, and by the end of the week has to walk around bow-legged, as officially exclusive as a mailbox.

Nobody does wry like Chandler.

This particular mystery hangs from a ceiling fan like a youth group leader after taking her first crack pipe. It's like wishing for suicide after your first kiss.

*chef's kiss*

L’ora, il luogo e l’essere amato non si trovano mai insieme …
«Stava guardando fuori dalla finestra, che era aperta e offriva la meravigliosa visione del parcheggio della polizia e del retro d’un cartellone pubblicitario.»
Una piccola storia ignobile come tante, per dirla con Francesco, ma narrata dal ... Maestro.
Una ragazzina di provincia che cerca il fratello scomparso tra le colline di Los Angeles. Philip Marlowe si incarica di ritrovarlo, ma sbatterà il muso nella parte più oscura della sfolgorante Hollywood ...
«Quasi non avevo un nome. Non mi sentivo di mangiare. Non avevo nemmeno voglia di un bicchierino. Ero come il foglio di ieri del calendario, accartocciato in fondo al cestino della carta straccia.».
E poi, nel mio personalissimo film, con un Marlowe che parla e si muove (e ti guarda!) come solo Bogey sapeva fare. Del resto, non è un caso che ... lorinbocol …
«Vuotai la pipa della cenere ormai fredda e tornai a riempirla prendendo il tabacco da un recipiente di cuoio che mi era stato regalato per Natale da un ammiratore. Un ammiratore che, per strana coincidenza, portava il mio stesso nome e cognome.»
En attendant … Chase …

The usual Marlowe goodness with more flirtatious, suspicious women than usual. Narrated by Elliot Gould.

MY GRADE: B plus.

Superb!

I love this series. Absolutely. If modern American crime writers could write like this, my tbr pile would be beyond overflowing.

If you want a little more about this book than what I've written here, you can click here and read about it at my reading journal. Otherwise, read on.

Like all of the Chandler novels so far, The Little Sister has a plot that is once again overly convoluted and overly complex, but Chandler is in rare form here, having Marlowe spill his guts about the city, his job, the people and even the state of California.

Marlowe is back in #615 Cahuenga "stalking the bluebottle fly" that's been buzzing around him for a while, when in walks Orfamay Quest, of whom Marlowe notes "nobody ever looked less like Lady Macbeth." * She's not Marlowe's usual fare -- no make up, and rimless glasses that "gave her that librarian's look." Hailing from the small town of Manhattan, Kansas, Orfamay wants Marlowe to find her brother Orrin. He came to Bay City a year earlier, and the last Orfamay and her mother heard from him was several months earlier. Now they're worried about him. Marlowe starts his search for Orrin at his last known address, and once again, our hero finds himself heading down the usual tangential road into a case that puts him smack into the glitz, glitter, and moral ugliness of Hollywood, a killer with a penchant for icepicks, corrupt cops, drugs and blackmail. It also leaves Marlowe feeling very, very low.

Once again, Chandler's descriptions of Los Angeles are at peak form, both positive and negative. Marlowe reflects and waxes melancholy on the case, Hollywood, the city and himself, with Marlowe at his most somber state of all of the novels so far. But, while the plot is once again complex enough to keep a file on who's who, how they're connected, etc. etc., I just love the sardonic cynicism of Marlowe. I also found myself for the first time in the series feeling sorry for the guy. I cannot speak highly enough of these novels -- they are some of the most literary crime novels ever written.

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 is gutter poetry, something worth savoring and as an amateur writer I find it well worth studying.

My only issue, and this seems to be an issue with Noir in particular, is that I have trouble constructing the crime in my head. I could give you a blow by blow of all the events of the book, but somehow I often come away fuzzy on the details of the mystery all the characters were circling around.

I know that the search for missing Big Brother is just the MacGuffin around which a lot of cool talk and snazzy descriptions happen, but I can't tell if my uncertainty about the nature of the crimes committed over the course of the book is Chandler's fault or mine.

But it was fun to read, and since I already bought "The Big Sleep" I know I'm going to revisit this particular author, but sometimes with noir I feel like I'm watching an untranslated Kung Fu movie. It's all really cool and stylish, but damned if I'm 100% sure why they're doing it.