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A review by brianlokker
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
4.0
Nobody writes L.A. noir quite like Raymond Chandler (although James Ellroy is no slouch).
In The Little Sister, Chandler’s fifth book featuring private detective Philip Marlowe, readers are treated to a portrait of late-1940s Los Angeles as seen through Marlowe’s weary, cynical eyes. Marlowe muses that he used to like L.A., but he doesn’t like the way it’s changed. Much of it, including his own “scrubby little office,” is down at the heels. The sheen of the city streets at night is manufactured and fake:
“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.”
When a plain young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, with the preposterous name of Orfamay Quest visits him in his office and asks him to locate her brother, he’s not too impressed with her either, but out of boredom he agrees to take on the case for the grand sum of $20. Marlowe figures it won’t be too tough to track down the brother, but before he knows it he’s knee-deep in gangsters, thugs, blackmailers, and other shady characters. And there may be more to Orfamay and her story about her brother than meets the eye.
The brother’s trail leads Marlowe into Hollywood, and it’s no surprise that Marlowe is pretty cynical about that glamor factory and its denizens too.
“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.”
But Marlowe is a man of principle who will do what it takes to find the truth and set things right, even if he has to skirt the law to do it, and even if he’s being used in the process by people with their own agendas.
If you like noir detective stories, you can’t miss with The Little Sister. It’s got everything — guns, girls, grit, and glamor, and of course, the world-weary, wise-cracking detective. Marlowe claims he’s not hard-boiled, that he’s a very sensitive guy. You can reach your own conclusion, but I’d say he’s both.
In The Little Sister, Chandler’s fifth book featuring private detective Philip Marlowe, readers are treated to a portrait of late-1940s Los Angeles as seen through Marlowe’s weary, cynical eyes. Marlowe muses that he used to like L.A., but he doesn’t like the way it’s changed. Much of it, including his own “scrubby little office,” is down at the heels. The sheen of the city streets at night is manufactured and fake:
“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.”
When a plain young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, with the preposterous name of Orfamay Quest visits him in his office and asks him to locate her brother, he’s not too impressed with her either, but out of boredom he agrees to take on the case for the grand sum of $20. Marlowe figures it won’t be too tough to track down the brother, but before he knows it he’s knee-deep in gangsters, thugs, blackmailers, and other shady characters. And there may be more to Orfamay and her story about her brother than meets the eye.
The brother’s trail leads Marlowe into Hollywood, and it’s no surprise that Marlowe is pretty cynical about that glamor factory and its denizens too.
“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.”
But Marlowe is a man of principle who will do what it takes to find the truth and set things right, even if he has to skirt the law to do it, and even if he’s being used in the process by people with their own agendas.
If you like noir detective stories, you can’t miss with The Little Sister. It’s got everything — guns, girls, grit, and glamor, and of course, the world-weary, wise-cracking detective. Marlowe claims he’s not hard-boiled, that he’s a very sensitive guy. You can reach your own conclusion, but I’d say he’s both.