The Little Sister

infobox Book |
name = The Little Sister
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First edition cover
author = Raymond Chandler
cover_artist =
country =
language = English
series = Philip Marlowe
genre = Detective, Crime, Novel
publisher = Hamish Hamilton
release_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 1940's Los Angeles.

Plot summary

The story opens when mousy Orfamay Quest walks into 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" who has recently moved to Bay City from Manhattan, Kansas to search for her older brother Orrin. Orrin had recently come out to Bay City to work as an engineer for the Cal-Western Aircraft Company, but has since then, 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.

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