The Little Sister (1949) is Raymond Chandler's fifth Philip Marlowe novel, and Marlowe is not a happy detective. This time around, he is feeling monumentally alienated and disengaged. Even the inevitable head injuries are just another tiring joke in a stupid routine. It's a case where everything goes wrong, any choice he makes turns out to be wrong, and he almost doesn't care at all anymore. Even about the three women messing with his head in various ways. An exceptionally twisted case whips an exceptionally weary detective.
I think it's Chandler's weakest novel by a long shot. I've read it three times, and I still can't quite make up my mind what's happening at the end of it all. Chandler himself described it as "a cadaver of a book," or words to that effect ("cadaver" was definitely part of it).
I think that the detective who follows the Dude in the Big Lebowski is following the same story as the Little Sister, though.
Pales in comparison to The Long Goodbye, in my opinion at least.
mlp, who wandered across from boingboing
Posted by mlp at 07:40 AM, February 27, 2004.