Product Description

A movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend and a pair of siblings with a shared secret lure Marlowe into the less than glamorous and more than a little dangerous world of Hollywood fame. Chandler's first foray into the industry that dominates the company town that is Los Angeles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58219 in Books
• Published on: 1988-08-12
• Released on: 1988-08-12
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Library Journal
Chandler is not only the best writer of hardboiled PI stories, he's one of the 20th century's top scribes, period. His full canon of novels and short stories is reprinted in trade paper featuring uniform covers in Black Lizard's signature style. A handsome set for a reasonable price.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Raymond Chandler is a master." --The New York Times

“[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered.” --The New Yorker

“Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious.” --Robert B. Parker, The New York Times Book Review

“Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye.” --Los Angeles Times

“Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist.” —The Boston Book Review

“Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler’s prose. . . . He wrote like an angel.” --Literary Review

“[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision.” --Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.” —Ross Macdonald

“Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude.” --Erle Stanley Gardner

“Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.” --Paul Auster

“[Chandler]’s the perfect novelist for our times. He takes us into a different world, a world that’s like ours, but isn’t. ” --Carolyn See

Review
"Raymond Chandler is a master." --The New York Times

?[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered.? --The New Yorker

?Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious.? --Robert B. Parker, The New York Times Book Review

?Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye.? --Los Angeles Times

?Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist.? ?The Boston Book Review

?Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler?s prose. . . . He wrote like an angel.? --Literary Review

?[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision.? --Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

?Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.? ?Ross Macdonald

?Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude.? --Erle Stanley Gardner

?Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.? --Paul Auster

?[Chandler]?s the perfect novelist for our times. He takes us into a different world, a world that?s like ours, but isn?t. ? --Carolyn See

Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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.