The Little Sister

For other uses, see Little Sister (disambiguation).

The Little Sister
First edition (US)
Author(s)	Raymond Chandler
Cover artist	Artzybasheff
Language	English
Series	Philip Marlowe
Genre(s)	Detective, Crime, Novel
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin (US) Hamish Hamilton (UK)
Publication date	1949
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	256 pp
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	The Lady in the Lake
Followed by	The Long Goodbye

The Little Sister is a 1949 novel by Raymond Chandler, the fifth in his popular Philip Marlowe series. The story is set in late 1940s Los Angeles.

Plot summary

The story opens when mousy Orfamay Quest first phones and then visits Philip Marlowe's office in search of a detective. Orfamay is a "small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses" from Manhattan, Kansas who has come to Los Angeles to search for her older brother Orrin. Orrin had recently come out to nearby Bay City (a fictional tough town that appears in many Chandler novels, modeled on the aircraft manufacturing sections of Santa Monica) to work as an engineer for the Cal-Western Aircraft Company, but has in recent months stopped writing to Orfamay and their mother. Orfamay describes her concern to Marlowe and asks that he find the whereabouts of her brother, despite giving Marlowe few leads with which to work. The case unfolds into a multi-murder mystery.

During his search for Orrin, Marlowe runs into movie starlets, gangsters, suspicious cops and, most disturbingly, corpses with ice-picks jammed in their necks.

Film and radio adaptations

This story was updated for the 1969 film Marlowe starring James Garner as detective Philip Marlowe.

The novel was adapted for radio by Bill Morrison, directed by John Tydeman and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 5 December 1977 starring Ed Bishop as Marlowe.

Another adaptation by Stephen Wyatt directed by Claire Grove was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 15 October 2011 starring Toby Stephens as Marlowe.