THE LITTLE SISTER is terrific mystery that concludes with a gruesome incident of sudden (albeit implausible) poetic justice. By my count, TLS has five murders and a suicide, with Philip Marlowe a step too slow to prevent any crime but way ahead of the cops (and this reader) as he identifies the perps and unravels their interlaced motives.

There are lots of standard Raymond Chandler elements in TLS, including gangsters, devious deadly dames, and a film-noir Los Angeles. But in contrast to other Chandler novels I've read, there seems to be even less effort to elucidate the sour integrity of the lonely Marlowe. Since this is the fifth novel in the series, Chandler probably felt such explication would add little to, and might actually detract from, his spare and disciplined style. On the other hand, Chandler tells us more about the movie business in TLS and his dialogue is never better. Among my marginalia is: "Conversation as combat."

In TLS, it's the cops that bring out the best in Ray. When they're on the page, Chandler's wonderful metaphors seem sharpest, his skillful screen writer's dialogue carries the most freight, and his rhetoric absolutely soars. Here's Chandler letting loose, as Lieutenant Christy French berates Marlowe:

"It's like this with us, baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts. And as if we didn't have enough trouble, we have to have you. As if we didn't get pushed around enough by the guys in the corner offices, the City Hall gang, the day chief, the night chief, the Chamber of Commerce, His Honor the Mayor. ...We spend our lives turning over dirty underwear and sniffing rotten teeth. We go up dark stairways to get a gun punk with a skinful of hop and sometimes we don't get all the way up, and our wives wait dinner that night and all the other nights. We don't come home anymore. And nights we do come home, we come home so [expletive] tired, we can't eat or sleep or even read the lies the papers print about us. So we lie awake at night in a cheap house on a cheap street..."

Highly recommended.

Originally published in 1949.

Remembering that cliches were once fresh when first spoken or written, Chandler is responsible for a bunch in this book.

But the real knock on this book is too much dialogue to explain the action, instead of action scenes driving the story forward.

The poorest effort I've read so far from Chandler. Instead start with his best known The Long Goodbye, or try this excellent collection of short stories: The Simple Art of Murder. For a lesser known classic, go with the well-turned Trouble Is My Business.

Originally published in 1949.

Remembering that cliches were once fresh when first spoken or written, Chandler is responsible for a bunch in this book.

But the real knock on this book is too much dialogue to explain the action, instead of action scenes driving the story forward.

The poorest effort I've read so far from Chandler. Instead start with his best known The Long Goodbye, or try this excellent collection of short stories: The Simple Art of Murder. For a lesser known classic, go with the well-turned Trouble Is My Business.

I'm not a fan of thrillers or mysteries. I'm only a casual fan of 'Noire'. Chandler's "The Little Sister" is probably one of the most intense books written in any genre. This is a book of moods: incredible evocations of a time and place and feeling that I have never encountered before. If you aspire to be a writer simply reading this book will teach you a hundred things that can make your writing brilliant. From a small dim shack where a suicide has taken place to a lavish mansion where a vamp waits in a darkened salon--the moods and atmospheres Chandler creates are shimmering and electric. This is a must read.

The Little Sister is a fine place to start for the new Chandler fan. Its plot is not overly complicated like some reviewers have said (It is easier to follow, say, than Farewell, My Lovely). But its main drag may be the opening half, which is just another retread of the same scenes fans of the genre have encountered many times in Red Wind, Trouble is My Business, The Big Sleep, and even Dashil Hammett's Maltese Falcon: the flirtatious woman with a problem, the surly hotel detective, and the sudden discovery of macabre corpses with all the answers on their dead tongues.

It's not that these noir tropes should be totally abandoned, but in Sister they are trotted out with a laziness that made me nervous I was reading The Great Book of Mystery Cliches. The leads are cardboard and have flat lines, the sideline characters are at best sketches and at worst (Dolores Gonzales) grossly caricatured stereotypes.

But the second half of the book, starting with Marlowe meeting the head of the studio, Mr. Oppenheimer, then through to the scene at the doctor's office and beyond reaches a new level. The cliches stick, but they are delivered with more humor, more terror, more vitality. And it helps that the writing is much improved. When Marlowe awakens from being drugged he describes the anxiety of opening his eyes: "A big black gorilla with a big black paw had his big black paw over my face and was trying to push it through the back of my neck. I pushed back."

Or this zinger to a dirty movie star: "I was born rich." "Yeah," I said. "You were born with a Cadillac in your mouth..."

I don't know what happened in the writing of this novel (though I've heard it was quickly published without edits) but there is a marked difference in quality from start to finish, and refreshingly it's a reverse of the usual order.

If it's your first dive into Chandler, the above complaints won't nag, though I can't imagine many people would pick this one up over the more readily recognizable novels. (The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye are just darn good titles, while The Little Sister is about as sexy as, well, your little sister.)

If you're looking for more Chandler, don't be turned off by criticisms that it's loose on focus or weak compared to his best. It's a solid novel that breaks free of the norm at the most critical moments.

Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's classic noir hard-boiled private detective forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets is right at home here in his search for the inevitable 'missing person'-this time-a missing brother being looked for by his sister from Kansas. But she ain't no Dorothy and the plot thickens from there. There is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists, particularly as we get a glance at the seedy side of those above-mentioned mean streets of Los Angeles. More so than earlier Marlowe adventures Chandler here gives his take on the changes in his former quiet little town of L.A. as a result of the double infusion of Hollywood hyp and war production during World war II. The gangsters naturally followed the money and the fame. Oh, and maybe came for the sun.

Marlowe is older and 'wiser' here but he still has that funny habit of tilting after windmills. He is at the beginning of a 'mid-life' crisis in this story. But what is a guy to do when there is a Hollywood movie star damsel in distress to rescue and the frame is on. And little Ms. Kansas is there to gum up the works. Besides he has cut a couple of corners in his pursuit of justice and the cops are mad. Damn, you know he has got to square things up. How does this this work with the other Marlowe volumes? Give me those background oil derricks churning out the Stearnwood wealth while looking for Rusty Regan in Big Sleep or the run down stucco flats in pursue of Moose's Velma in Farewell, My Lovely any day. Nevertheless here, as always with Chandler, you get high literature in a plebian package. Read on.

Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's classic noir hard-boiled private detective forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets is right at home here in his search for the inevitable 'missing person'-this time-a missing brother being looked for by his sister from Kansas. But she ain't no Dorothy and the plot thickens from there. There is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists, particularly as we get a glance at the seedy side of those above-mentioned mean streets. Marlowe is older and 'wiser' here but he still has that funny habit of tilting after windmills. How does this this work with the other Marlowe volumes? Give me those background oil derricks churning out the wealth while looking for Rusty Regan in Big Sleep or the run down stucco flats in pursue of Moose's Velma in Farewell, My Lovely any day. Nevertheless here, as always with Chandler, you get high literature in a plebian package. Read on.

Marlowe is on the prowl again, when the petite sibling of the title arrives at his dingy office with a crisp new twenty and a sob-story about a brother who has vanished. The holier-than-thou attitude and the pouting lips pique Marlowe's interest, and he soon finds himself looking for the truth among the sordid sorority of Hollywood elite. As always, Chander is the master of the poetic line and the brilliant image...the English language has never been served so well. The plot? Well, I must admit that I'm still a bit unclear about exactly what happened and why, however, I loved the book anyway. I know that Chandler is a "languager" not a "plotter," and I relish the words he chooses. A great book by an American master!

Marlowe is on the prowl again, when the petite sibling of the title arrives at his dingy office with a crisp new twenty and a sob-story about a brother who has vanished. The holier-than-thou attitude and the pouting lips pique Marlowe's interest, and he soon finds himself looking for the truth among the sordid sorority of Hollywood elite. As always, Chander is the master of the poetic line and the brilliant image...the English language has never been served so well. The plot? Well, I must admit that I'm still a bit unclear about exactly what happened and why, however, I loved the book anyway. I know that Chandler is a "languager" not a "plotter," and I relish the words he chooses. A great book by an American master!

The Little Sister is an entertaining read because Chandler is one of the great American stylists and perhaps one of the most naturally gifted writers of the 20th century. His breezy, conversational prose is a pleasure to read no matter what he's writing about, and the character of Philip Marlowe is a hugely enjoyable one to spend time with. That being said, this is not Chandler's best. I haven't read all of his books, but there seems to be something like consensus among the faithful that this is on the weak end of the spectrum. The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, the other Chandler novels I've read, were both much better, and I've heard the Lady in the Lake is also very good. While there are certainly a number of memorable moments in The Little Sister, and all the expected touch points are here--beautiful, dangerous women; murder; a complicated mystery--the plot is convoluted, even for Chandler, and very difficult to follow. I more or less gave up trying to get a grip on the mechanics of the "mystery" aspect of the book about halfway through and simply read the remainder of the novel to enjoy it scene by scene. And while it's always a bit of an indulgent male-fantasy in Chandler novels when the gorgeous women throw themselves at gumshoe Marlowe, here, some of those bits careen into absurdity. The most gorgeous women in Hollywood routinely ask our hero to shut up and kiss them mid-conversation! Still, there are a number of intriguing characters in The Little Sister--particularly the sultry Dolores Gonzales--and I would rather spend time reading Chandler's weaker work than most other novelists' crowning achievements. I'm glad I got this one out of the way. When I'm opening my last Chandler novel, I wouldn't want to have ended with The Little Sister.

About 3 days ago I bought and read 'The Little Sister'(1949).

The plot is impenetratable, the narrative and dialogue are schizophrenic. The tone and attitude of the tale fluctuates between a pompous 50's puritanism, and an overtly misogynistic sexual bohemia, which 60 years later is comical.

But don't get me wrong, I loved it. Marlowe steps off the page and into your head. He is brought to life by Chandler's dexterous turn of phrase, and insightful observation, both of which are as unexpected, as they are delicious.

Chapter 22 pg 149 "I got up on my feet. I was as dizzy as dervish, as weak as a worn-out washer, as low as a badger's belly, as timid as a titmouse, and as unlikely to succeed as a ballet dancer with a wooden leg".

It's a damm fine book.

Incidentally it feels as if about a 1/4 of the book revolves around the lighting, smoking, and stubbing out of cigarettes; so if this book was written by the anti-tobbaco lobby it would be 60 pages shorter.

I think this is the novel where Chandler started to take his press clippings seriously and tried to write an Important Book. While it's a very good book, the book feels like a lesser sequel to his previous four classic novels perhaps because it strays a little more from its pulp roots. In the earlier books, he showed us the seamy side of Los Angeles, and the characters demonstrated their basic corruption through their actions. There is some of that in this novel as well, but he also feels the need to tell us what Philip Marlowe actually thinks about your average person. "Tired men in dusty coupes and sedans winced and tightened their grip on the wheel and ploughed on north and west toward home and dinner, the whining of their spoiled children and the gabble of their silly wives." True, probably. Pleasant, no. Marlowe also occasionally indulges in self pity. A flawed hero is one thing; an unlikable one is something else altogether.

There's no leavening the unpleasantness as even Marlowe himself doesn't come off well. As misanthropic as Marlowe becomes in this novel, you wonder why he even bothers to do his Don Quixote thing. In this book, I think Chandler strays somewhat from his original concept of Marlowe, and the book suffers as a result. Still a good read, but far from classic.

not Chandler's best. The book was written during his wife's dying and death. Chandler could not bring himself to reread it, therefore some of the language oddities can be forgiven as well as character inconsistencies. There are terrific descriptions as usual, but motivation for the many violent things people do isn't apparent and in the end the bottom drops out. That said, you could do worse in the genre.