“I used to like this town,” I said, just to be saying something and not to be thinking too hard. “A long time ago. There were trees along Wilshire Boulevard. Beverly Hills was a country town. Westwood was bare hills and lots offering at eleven hundred dollars and no takers. Hollywood was a bunch of frame houses on the interurban line. Los Angeles was just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but goodhearted and peaceful.
~ The Little Sister, by Raymond Chandler
Author Raymond Chandler… and author Dashiell Hammett ten years earlier… and Hollywood films of their books starring Humphrey Bogart playing their main characters, Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade… All this equals Los Angeles noir at it’s finest.
One of the books I chose to read for R.I.P-XIV was The Little Sister, by Raymond Chandler. It had been a long time since I read any of Chandler’s books so I was fascinated by the hard, cynical, burned-out private detective character of Philip Marlowe. And I was equally fascinated by Raymond Chandler’s writing style and creative way of telling this story. It’s no wonder that Hollywood loved and still loves these types of stories. When reading them, they’re hard to put down. And Raymond Chandler was one of the best and someone who inspired many writers to follow in his footsteps.
from the publisher:
In noir master Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister, a movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend and a pair of siblings with a shared secret lure private eye Philip 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.
A fun read, The Little Sister is the fifth book in Chandler’s Philip Marlowe series. It was published in 1949, so I am also including it on my list of books read for my year-long celebration of turning Seventy years old!
It’s fun to think that The Little Sister and I are the same age!
I read this book for both my R.I.P-XIV challenge and my year long celebration of turning Seventy!
One of my favorite mystery series is the Mrs. Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman. I’ve been slowly “re-reading” the series by listening to the audiobooks on Audible (you can read one of my reviews here). In my reading notebook, I found a number of quotes that I wrote down the first time I read the series.This one was from Mrs. Pollifax on Safari. It reveals the personality of the main character and gives you a flavor of these fun-to-read books.
A Fondness For Reading 