Raymond Chandler The Little Sister, Knopf: NY, 1949
"Maybe you don't know Bay City, Mr. Marlowe."
"Ha," I said. "All I know about Bay City is that every time I go there I have to buy a new head." (p. 9)
" . . .
"You don't look at rooms in this town. You grab them sight unseen. This burg's so jam-packed even now that I could get ten bucks just for telling there's a vacancy here." (p. 26)
- a man vacating his room in a rooming house in Bay City
" . . .
"The little man counting money in the kitchen went nicely with the neighborhood. The fact that he carried a gun and a knife was a social eccentricity that would cause no comment at all on Idaho Street." (p. 32)
-Marlowe visiting 449 Idaho St. in Bay City
" . . .
" . . . Wyoming Street, which according to my map was not quite in the best residential neighborhood and not quite out of it." (p. 34)
" . . .
"On the right the great fat solid Pacific trudging into shore like a scrubwoman going home. No moon, no fuss, hardly a sound of the surf. No smell. None of the harsh wild smell of the sea. A California ocean. California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing." (p. 80)
-Marlowe in a bad mood
" . . .
"Don't be silly . . . They don't have gangsters in Bay City. They're all working in pictures." (p. 136)
-Marlowe
" . . .
"I've always had a swell time in Bay City-while I stayed conscious." (p. 169)-Marlowe
" . . .
"What makes you Bay City cops so tough?" he asked. "You pickle your nuts in salt water or something?" (p. 169)
-an LA cop to a Bay City cop
" . . .
"In Bay City," Maglashan said, "we could murder you for that."
"In Bay City you could murder me for wearing a blue tie," I said. (p. 171)
-Marlowe is in trouble for calling the Bay City police to report a murder anonymously and then leaving the scene of the crime.