Raymond Chandler
La Sorellina

A young woman hires detective Philip Marlowe to find her missing brother for a paltry compensation of 20 dollars. This is the situation from which the plot of the novel "The Little Sister" by Raymond Chandler develops.

The first time I read it, I did so for one of the worst possible reasons to read any type of book. Over time, I had ended up reading all the other novels by Chandler, and only this one was left, and a nagging voice in my head kept telling me to read it, read it, so I could consider myself a complete connoisseur of the author. Nonsense.

That first time, I also had low expectations, having been influenced by some reviews that labeled it as his worst novel. I read it reluctantly, distractedly, and only towards the end did something stick in my mind. A confusing idea, something strange compared to the usual Chandler: a closing of the circle in a whodunit style. Could it be? I didn’t verify it immediately, I told myself I would read it again more carefully to confirm that vague idea, meanwhile, I could pin the medal I wanted on my chest.

So the second time I read the book, I did it for one of the worst reasons, in my opinion, to read a Raymond Chandler novel: the search for an interesting plot. In my view, when reading Chandler, there’s nothing better to do than enjoy some things that have nothing to do with an interesting plot. There's the enjoyment of his style, the dialogues he constructs between his characters, the description of their gestures, their traits, looks, tone of voice, clothes... and above all, there’s the enjoyment of the perspective with which Philip Marlowe views the world. The fact that everything is set in a more or less interesting plot is almost irrelevant.

The third time I read it, was the charm. The words need to roll around in your mind without haste. It's appropriate to have a prolonged reading and to allow yourself a break in your life where you take advantage of a hand on your shoulder from someone who tells you, "look at the world from this angle, maybe it won't be so scary." The kind of man who, when faced with a client's statement like, "I wouldn't like to hire a detective who uses alcohol in any form, I don't even approve of tobacco," can retort with "you don't mind if I peel an orange?" The kind of man capable of confronting the solitude of his office after tough times with thoughts like: "I talked to the scales of the alligator, an alligator named Marlowe."

Returning briefly to the second time I read it, I then noticed a structure in the novel that indeed in some way links back to the "English" mystery: all the information to arrive at the resolution is sprinkled throughout the story, and it's all deduced from the detective's final conclusions.

And never heed reviews. Forced to rank them, I might prefer "The Long Goodbye" and "Farewell, My Lovely." Perhaps. But I'm not so sure.

The genre is: Hard-Boiled (not listed among the genres in the guided procedure)