Lille søster (1949)

I really like this one. After I read the first book Raymond Chandler wrote, I was not sure if I would want to read any other one. Too many old clichés and it felt more like reading a really bad pulp story.

But this one changes it, this is a really great story, well written, well told.

[Doesn't change the fact that every body smokes, and there isn't a page where there is nobody smoking ;)] ( )

Another three star Chandler. I'm guessing this might do me in for more of his books. The Big Sleep (1939) was a spectacular introduction to Chandler's style and world. And his The Long Goodbye (1953) has made it into my top ten favorite books.

Like Farewell, My Lovely, there are just too many descriptive sections in The Little Sister that go on and on, usually at the beginning of a chapter. It slows the hardboiled, fast-pace style that drew me to Chandler's prose in the first place. The story here is good but the execution just isn't there.

Weird, the two books I don't like fell in between the two I really liked. As I said before, read The Long Goodbye. It's well worth it for social commentary, fast-paced writing, and a good time. Trust me. ( )

This is by far the strangest of the Chandler books I've read so far. The case itself hinghes on blackmail and mistaken idenity, but the problem with this on is that even Marlowe himself is difficult to like. It took me a long to read it and it's a short book, so, if you are a fan, like me, explore, but if not, don't bother with this one. ( )

My, was Raymond in a foul mood when he wrote this. Fine by me as I was in one when I read it.

I see this book's copped a bit on goodreads. Unfair. Totally unfair. If you get the drift, the guy's got the shits and he is looking at life from the wrong end of the telescope, he does such a good job of that.

There are two types of people in the world. The ones for whom money is everything: they need to get as much of it as possible, take it willynilly from whereever they can, make sure nobody else gets to touch it; and the ones for whom it is as trivial as something necessary can get. In this story, Marlowe is the latter, everybody else is the former.

Very early on in the story his client walks in, a girl highly motivated by money and as mean spirited as such people are.

'You can't talk to me like that,' she flared up. 'Pipe smoking is a dirty habit. Mother never let father smoke in the house, even the last two years after he had his stroke. He used to sit with that empty pipe on his mouth sometimes. But she didn't like him to do that really. We owed a lot of money too and she said she couldn't afford to give him money for useless things like tobacco. The church needed it much more than he did.'


It didn't bother her in the least to talk like that. People who think money is everything, do. But Marlowe, who couldn't be less motivated by the stuff, is haunted through the book by the picture of this miserable git surrounded by his ghastly family. Throughout he is made gloomier and gloomier by the disparity between the people who use money to get what they want and the ones who don't have it. That means the bell boy and the cop and the DA. The ones who are honest are worn out by their honesty, by fighting with so little on their side against people who don't have rules, whose word mean nothing, who think that power is its own right.

There are few of those moments in this book where Chandler makes you smile. I loved:

One of the girls was a dark beauty who had been younger.


I read that a dozen times, what a nice turn of phrase. But then, a few pages later, descibing a room:

...a tray that had held coffee.


I don't think you can get away with this. Sorry, Raymond, having the shits about something doesn't give you those sorts of liberties. Would Marlowe be that sloppy?


( )

My, was Raymond in a foul mood when he wrote this. Fine by me as I was in one when I read it.

I see this book's copped a bit on goodreads. Unfair. Totally unfair. If you get the drift, the guy's got the shits and he is looking at life from the wrong end of the telescope, he does such a good job of that.

There are two types of people in the world. The ones for whom money is everything: they need to get as much of it as possible, take it willynilly from whereever they can, make sure nobody else gets to touch it; and the ones for whom it is as trivial as something necessary can get. In this story, Marlowe is the latter, everybody else is the former.

Very early on in the story his client walks in, a girl highly motivated by money and as mean spirited as such people are.

'You can't talk to me like that,' she flared up. 'Pipe smoking is a dirty habit. Mother never let father smoke in the house, even the last two years after he had his stroke. He used to sit with that empty pipe on his mouth sometimes. But she didn't like him to do that really. We owed a lot of money too and she said she couldn't afford to give him money for useless things like tobacco. The church needed it much more than he did.'


It didn't bother her in the least to talk like that. People who think money is everything, do. But Marlowe, who couldn't be less motivated by the stuff, is haunted through the book by the picture of this miserable git surrounded by his ghastly family. Throughout he is made gloomier and gloomier by the disparity between the people who use money to get what they want and the ones who don't have it. That means the bell boy and the cop and the DA. The ones who are honest are worn out by their honesty, by fighting with so little on their side against people who don't have rules, whose word mean nothing, who think that power is its own right.

There are few of those moments in this book where Chandler makes you smile. I loved:

One of the girls was a dark beauty who had been younger.


I read that a dozen times, what a nice turn of phrase. But then, a few pages later, descibing a room:

...a tray that had held coffee.


I don't think you can get away with this. Sorry, Raymond, having the shits about something doesn't give you those sorts of liberties. Would Marlowe be that sloppy?


( )