Jake Hinkson has an essay on one of noir’s “hard luck ladies,” Martha Vickers, who played the nymphomaniac younger sister of Lauren Bacall’s character in The Big Sleep.

I find Vickers’ character, Carmen Sternwood, to be the most interesting character in both the film and the book by Raymond Chandler. I dislike Chandler’s work for a list of reasons, one being his puritanism.The Big Sleepshows a fear of female sexuality.In the book,Philip Marloweactually finds...