The Little Sister: A Novel

Excellent:
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.

WATCH OUT-THIS AIN'T DOROTHY FROM KANSAS:
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 they just 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 compare 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.

Simply brilliant writing:
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.

You talk too much (with regards to George Thorogood):
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.

A rare mystery: starts weak, ends strong:
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.