The Little Sister
- 256
- Pages
- about 4.5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Little Sister” is a sharp, sardonic Philip Marlowe novel steeped in Raymond Chandler’s distaste for Hollywood. A missing-persons case leads Marlowe to a blackmail scheme around a young film star in late-1940s Los Angeles. Some readers rank it among the stronger books in the series and praise how well the story is told. Readers who like their noir laced with wit will find it a treat.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
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 and follows Marlowe's investigation of a missing persons case and blackmail scheme centered around a Hollywood starlet. With several scenes involving the film industry, the novel 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, with Boris Artzybasheff creating the dust jacket art for the first U.S. edition.
Reading order · Philip Marlowe
Full order & progress →- The Big SleepStart here
7.67.6 / 10 - Farewell, My Lovely
7.77.7 / 10 - The High Window
7.67.6 / 10 - Lady in the LakeLady in the Lake–Not ranked yet
- The Little SisterThis book
7.67.6 / 10 - The Long Goodbye
8.08.0 / 10 - PlaybackPlayback–Not ranked yet
- Trouble Is My BusinessTrouble Is My Business–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.5 across 55 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 27% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Crime & mystery average of 7.6. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.8 | 10 | 18% |
| Hardcover | 7.5 | 45 | 82% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Little Sister?
It has 256 pages — shorter than 91% of the ranked books in Crime & mystery.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Crime & mystery — and a score of 7.6, the closest to this book.
