The Little Sister

The Little Sister is a 1949 novel by Raymond Chandler, his fifth featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe. The story is set in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. The novel centres on the younger sister of a Hollywood starlet and has several scenes involving the film industry. It was partly inspired by Chandler's experience working as a screenwriter in Hollywood and his low opinion of the industry and most of the people in it. The book was first published in the UK in June 1949 and was released in the United States three months later.

Mousy Orfamay Quest from Manhattan, Kansas asks Philip Marlowe to search for her older brother Orrin, who had recently come out to work in nearby Bay City (a fictional town modelled on Santa Monica).[1] Marlowe starts with Orrin's last known address, a seedy apartment building. The superintendent there has passed out in a drunken stupor and when awoken tries to call a Dr. Lagardie before passing out again. Marlowe then finds a man who claims to be a retired optometrist living in Orrin's old room. As Marlowe leaves the building, he finds the superintendent is dead, having been stabbed in the neck with an ice pick. Marlowe phones the Bay City police to report the murder, but doesn't leave his name...
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