Free The Little Sister (BBC Radio Collection) Ebooks To Download
Ed Bishop stars as Philip Marlowe in this powerfully atmospheric BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Raymond Chandler's novel about the cynical, world-weary, wise cracking shamus whose honesty in a dishonest world sent him down the mean streets again and again in search of some kind of justice. The case of a missing brother from some two-bit Kansas town didn't look like Marlowe's best shot at the big time. But pretty soon it turned out that this particular brother had the embarrassing habit of knowing guys who finished up on the wrong end of an ice-pick. Until, that is, he did too.
Series: BBC Radio Collection
Audio CD
Publisher: BBC Pubns (May 17, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0563524022
ISBN-13: 978-0563524021
Product Dimensions: 0.2 x 5.5 x 4.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (164 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #8,062,669 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #33 in Books > Books on CD > Authors, A-Z > ( C ) > Chandler, Raymond #1219 in Books > Books on CD > Radio Shows #1294 in Books > Books on CD > Literature & Fiction > Drama
Postwar L.A. -- and especially Hollywood -- is the setting for Chandler's fifth Marlowe novel which, like the time and place (and the author himself), is a little "off." Marlowe's beginning to tire, his loneliness is a bit more apparent, and the disillusionment has started to etch permanent lines on him.None of which stops him. Neither does it make "The Little Sister" a bad work. In fact, it holds up remarkably well alongside Chandler's first four novels.Chandler draws upon contemporary events and personages for much of his inspiration here (something he did in several earlier stories and novels, to a lesser degree); the photo which triggers the action in "Sister," for example, is based on an incident involving gangster Bugsy Siegel . . . but then the character of Steelgrave, himself, bears a more than passing resemblance to the then-recently deceased hood. It's equally evident that Chandler relied upon his recent screenwriting experience (and exposure to Paramount and Universal studios) for material and characters. There's an element of gleeful revenge, I suspect, for example, in the character of agent Sheridan Ballou: certain characteristics, such as his tendency to strut up and down his office twirling a mallaca cane, can only have been inspired by director/screenwriter Billy Wilder (with whom Chandler, collaborating on the screenplay for "Double Indemnity," shared an entirely mutual loathing).Other characters, primarily a pair of mismatched thugs sent to intimidate Marlowe, are pure burlesque; Chandler appears to be simply indulging himself here (while he simultaneously manages yet another dig at the movie industry).
The latest in a long series of visits to LA had me refreshing my memory of one of my favourite novelists. As a young man I knew the Philip Marlowe books nearly by heart before I ever set foot in the city they put on the literary map. I have always thought that Chandler counts as literature not just as crime fiction. He was a professed admirer of the ultra-craftsman Flaubert, and it shows in the way he works at every sentence, indeed every word. He was English and as far as I know unrelated to the 'real' LA Chandlers (he attended the same school as P G Wodehouse, if you can believe it). He maintained that 'the American language' can say anything and in The Simple Art of Murder he took a brilliant potshot at the Agatha Christie school of English crime fiction , all tight-lipped butlers polishing the georgian silver and respectful upper-middles gathered to hear the amateur master-sleuth analyse over 5 or 6 pages which of them dunnit. His power of creating atmosphere is phenomenal, his dialogue is legendary, and for me The Little Sister is the best of the 7 Marlowes. It's at the crest of the hill, before he started to lose concentration in The Long Goodbye and lost just about everything in the sad Playback. I can still feel the heavy heat at the start of the book, and the dialogue is the best he ever did. Is there any other instance of anyone silencing Marlowe with an answer the way the beat-up hotel dick does when Marlowe tells him he is going up to room such-and-such and the hotel dick says 'Am I stopping you?'. And I cherish the bit about the same character tucking his gun into his waistband 'in an emergency he could probably have got it out in less than a minute'.
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