The Little Sister: Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe

A young woman from Kansas arrives in Los Angeles looking for her missing brother, and Philip Marlowe takes the case mostly from boredom, only to find himself deep in Hollywood's criminal underworld where blackmail, narcotics, and murder overlap with the movie industry's need to protect its stars. Chandler's fifth Marlowe novel is a sharp-eyed portrait of Los Angeles glamour as a thin coat of paint over rot.

Scott Brick narrates with the wry familiarity of someone who has spent considerable time in Marlowe's company, delivering the novel's celebrated one-liners with the timing of an actor who knows not to oversell them. The Hollywood setting gives Brick's narration a particular atmosphere to work with, and the observations about celebrity and corruption sound freshly cynical even decades after publication. A lean, satisfying entry in the definitive American detective series.