The little sister

Number 5 in Chandler's Philip Marlowe series, and a strong novel this one. It has the usual smart-mouth Marlowe with his low opinion of himself, with his clever thoughts and the complexity of a story he takes time to work out. One of the things I love about Marlowe is how he gets it wrong, or realises too late (as he sinks to the ground, usually), but comes back strong.

In this story, Marlowe's client - She was a small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses. She had no make-up, no lipstick and no jewelry. The rimless glasses gave her that librarian's look. - is looking for her brother, who is missing. Marlowe checks out his accommodation, and is immediately on the back foot after the man he spoke to before heading upstairs is dead when he comes back down.

In this novel Marlowe's relationship with the cops it tested, and he has to tread his fine line.

French said: “It's like this with us, baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts. And as if we didn't have enough trouble, we have to have you. As if we didn't get pushed around enough by the guys in the corner offices, the City Hall gang, the day chief, the night chief, the Chamber of Commerce, His Honor the Mayor in his paneled office four times as big as the three lousy rooms the whole homicide staff has to work out of. As if we didn't have to handle one hundred and fourteen homicides last year out of three rooms that don't have enough chairs for the whole duty squad to sit down in at once. We spend our lives turning over dirty underwear and sniffing rotten teeth. We go up dark stairways to get a gun punk with a skinful of hop and sometimes we don't get all the way up, and our wives wait dinner that night and all the other nights. We don't come home any more. And nights we do come home, we come home so goddam tired we can't eat or sleep or even read the lies the papers print about us. So we lie awake in the dark in a cheap house on a cheap street and listen to the drunks down the block having fun. And just about the time we drop off the phone rings and we get up and start all over again. Nothing we do is right, not ever. Not once. If we get a confession, we beat it out of the guy, they say, and some shyster calls us Gestapo in court and sneers at us when we muddle our grammar. If we make a mistake they put us back in uniform on Skid Row and we spend the nice cool summer evenings picking drunks out of the gutter and being yelled at by whores and taking knives away from greaseballs in zoot suits. But all that ain't enough to make us entirely happy. We got to have you.” He stopped and drew in his breath. His face glistened a little as if with sweat. He leaned forward from his hips. “We got to have you,” he repeated. “We got to have sharpers with private licenses hiding information and dodging around corners and stirring up dust for us to breathe in. We got to have you suppressing evidence and framing set-ups that wouldn't fool a sick baby. You wouldn't mind me calling you a goddam cheap double-crossing keyhole peeper, would you, baby?” “You want me to mind?” I asked him. He straightened up. “I'd love it,” he said. “In spades redoubled.”

I don't want to give out any more plot. Go read it (after book 1-4 - although that isn't strictly required).

4 stars.