The Little Sister

In The Little Sister, Raymond Chandler's fifth novel, Marlowe is hired to find a boy who has run away from Kansas to Los Angeles. Chandler’s work in Hollywood (he was a screenwriter for Paramount) seems to be an influence on the book’s narrative, and especially Marlowe’s growing cynicism toward the city: 

I used to like this town… A long time ago. There were trees along Wilshire Boulevard. Beverly Hills was a country town… Los Angeles was just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but good hearted and peaceful. It had the climate they just yap about now. People used to sleep on porches. Little groups who thought they were intellectual used to call it the Athens of America. It wasn’t that, but it wasn’t a neon lighted slum either.

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