The Little Sister

Starred review from July 15, 2002
Chandler is not only the best writer of hardboiled PI stories, he's one of the 20th century's top scribes, period. His full canon of novels and short stories is reprinted in trade paper featuring uniform covers in Black Lizard's signature style. A handsome set for a reasonable price.

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 28, 1997
Lark's impressive comics adaptation of Chandler's archetypal hardboiled detective novel integrates the best of the latter's classic tough-guy dialogue and feverishly intricate plotting with Lark's stylishly noir illustrations. Bespectacled, spinsterish Midwesterner Orfamay Quest visits the down-at-the heels office of PI Philip Marlowe, ostensibly looking for her missing brother. But Marlowe soon learns that the case is not simple; as the bodies proliferate, it's clear that the little sister knows a lot more than she admits. Lark captures 1940s L.A.'s gloomy, neon-lit luxuriousness; the cigarettes and trench coats, snap-brim fedoras and snappier dialogue ("So I kissed her. It was either that or slug her."). His chiaroscuro drawings are a bit static, but his elegant panel compositions, generally shrouded in flat black shadows and accented by wan earth tones, serve as wonderfully cinematic snapshots of the novel's action.