Books: Murder at the Old Stand

THE LITTLE SISTER (249 pp.)—Raymond Chandler—Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).

To be caught with a Raymond Chandler whodunit in hand is a fate no highbrow reader need dread. When The Big Sleep, his first, was published in 1939, it not only wowed the choosiest mystery reviewers; it also won him a large audience in which even the most determined intellectual could feel at home. Chicago-born and an ex-jack-of-many-trades, Chandler proved in his next three books that the cheers were justified. They had everything a good detective story needs: ingenuity, suspense, pace, credibility. But they had a lot more. Their private-eye hero, Philip Marlowe, was...