The Little Sister is
the fifth book in the Philip Marlowe series. It starts with a girl
from Kansas named Orfamay Quest hiring Marlowe to find her brother,
Orrin. Marlowe's investigation leads him to a string of ice-pick
murders, disenchanted movie stars and shady doctors.
Raymond
Chandler's books are known for their nigh impenetrable plotting. I
remember being completely dumbfounded reading The Big Sleep
and not understanding the denoument at all. The Little
Sister is much the same. I tried
to keep all the information in my head but gave up halfway through,
deciding that I would have to come back and read it some day. Not
that that's a bad thing in itself. After all, reading a book more
than once should be a sign of quality.
The
plot may be a struggle, but the book thrives on atmosphere. It starts
off on the lower rung of society with Marlowe investigating some
rundown motels, then moves to the glitzy (but just as corrupt) world
of Hollywood. The settings may be diverse, but they all carry the
same hollow, washed-out feeling.
Marlowe
himself carries this feeling throughout the book. In one scene, he
discovers a man has stolen $150 from a freshly murdered corpse.
Rather than report him, Marlowe lets him keep the money and allows
him to flee the scene. Something similar happens at the very end of
the book, where Marlowe hesitates to act to prevent a tragedy.
Despite his attempts to maintain some semblance of honour (like
protecting his clients even if it means getting arrested) Marlowe
ultimately comes across like someone with little to no faith in
society. The story itself doesn't seem to have much faith either,
showing the police, the medical profession and Hollywood all through
a jaded lense.
There's
a multitude of characters for a 300-page book, two of which I found
especially memorable. One of them was Flack, the housekeeper of the
Van Nuys Hotel. The remarkable thing about Flack was how vivid he was
despite his small role in the story. His characterisation was simple
(lazy, greedy, cowardly) but his grotesqueness made him stand out.
Flack symbolizes the corruption at the heart of this society, where
people are ready to eat each other alive to stay on top.
The
other character to have an impact on me was Detective Lieutenant
Christy French. Despite his hatred for Marlowe for disrupting his
investigations, there were striking similarities between them. Like
Marlowe, French feels disenchanted in a world he feels doesn't
recognise his hard work; he gives a resonant speech on it in Chapter
29. And while he and his partners enjoy letting Marlowe sweat, French
is shown to have a personal code when it comes to abusing suspects.
The story contrasts him with the more thuggish Moses Maglashan. The
connection between Marlowe and French is more proof of the
destructive effect of this society – the institutional constraints
of the force, and Marlowe's duties to his clients put them fiercely
at odds with each other, even though they're ultimately very similar.
In
conclusion, this book is to be enjoyed for its atmosphere and stylish
character depictions which convey the damaging effect of the world of
the story. It's not a book to brighten up your day and it will no
doubt leave you scratching your head at the plot, but it's worth it
nonetheless. Chandler makes the story tantalising enough that I hope
to return to it some day, hopefully to gain a better understanding of
it.
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