Something Archer and Philip Marlowe have in common is that they display the “wary good humour of men whose calling is death”. Okay, that description actually appears in this book attached to the otherwise inconsequential character of the deputy coroner, but I think it’s apt for both these California detectives. They are closed men, men in many ways shut off from the wider world, but they are able to keep up a string of patter when dealing with murder. Indeed it’s one of the more reliable weapons in their arsenal, used in questionings as a way to either create a rapport or cause heckles of tension. That’s not to say they’re glib, it isn’t to imply that they’re characters laughing in the face of brutal murder. No, they understand the seriousness of their trade, they know what murder means and the fact of it morally repulses them. But even with blood and death around them, they maintain that wary good humour and use it to their advantage. In comparison a Mike Hammer will respond with furious outrage, while for a Hercule Poirot or a Sherlock Holmes murder is more of an elegant parlour game. Both Archer and Marlowe understand the gravity, know the consequences, but unlike Martin Beck in the last mystery I read, they are not so ground down by it that the dialogue suffers.‘The Doomsters’ isn’t actually the best Archer out there, or perhaps having read ‘The Chill’ my standards and expectations are just now way too high. For a long time it looks as if it’s a mess, with a frenetic set up, awkward pacing and an unwieldy set of characters. By the end it seems that there is more design to it than first meets the eye, but there remain a number of loose strands hanging out that really should have gone somewhere.Having a quiet night at home, Archer is suddenly disturbed by Carl Hallman, an escaped mental patient who has been put onto Archer by a mutual friend. Carl is a troubled boy – whose parents have both died recently - and Archer tries to do the right thing by driving him back to the mental hospital. On the way though, Carl overpowers him and steals his car. When Archer wakes up he tries to track down the car, whilst still having sympathy enough for Carl to try to help him. However things get rapidly out of hand. Before long Carl’s estranged brother Jerry has been murdered and Carl is the main suspect. What follows is a sweaty and fast paced twenty four hours where Archer does his damndest to save Carl from a lynch-mob, while investigating the brother’s murder, the parents’ deaths and watching helplessly as other bodies pile up around him. In addition he has to contend with a bullying sheriff, a doctor who might not be as smooth as he seems, a nurse with a secret, an inquisitive reporter and various family members desperate with grief and their own self-interest.If it sounds like a lot has been crammed in, then that’s because a lot has been crammed in. It’s a book where a disappointing number of characters are not given time to breathe (there’s also, which is more noticeable now than it would have been when it was written, a slightly dodgy Asian stereotype). Of course cramming so much plot in to a short space of time may have been an attempt by MacDonald to make something more fast paced and cinematic (as no Archer novel had been filmed by this point), but it ends up coming across as an interesting experiment which doesn’t quite work – a cramped novel, which needs more space to move around in. At the end though MacDonald does something incredibly interesting (which I’ll do my best here to talk about, without revealing anything), creating a circle of guilt that is almost perfect in its roundness. A conversation takes place where a character accuses Archer of not listening to something many years before, alleging that if Archer had listened to it he could have stopped many of these tragedies occurring. Now though everything has come around and Archer finds himself at the end of a chain of events, with him solving the crimes and stopped any further tragedy. But if he’d had more patience and listened to that visitor to his office one afternoon years earlier, he could have stopped it all. Archer is the hero who has unravelled the mystery, but he's still made to feel as guilty as any of the other characters. It’s beautifully done and ties everything tight in a circle of flawed morality – with only the few stray ends to ruin the whole package. Mystery novels are sometimes criticised for not being like reality, as reality is far more messy. This book goes the other direction and tries to connect all the crimes and all the guilt together in one neat little bow. Yes it’s artificial and yes it’s nowhere near real, but you can’t help but admire the design.
I love Ross MacDonald's writing style. Quotes!"Her mouth was crudely outlined in fresh lipstick, which i guessed she had just dabbed on as a concession to the outside world. The only other concession was a pink nylon robe from which her breasts threatened to overflow.""She had on a dark business suit which her body filled the way grapes fill their skins. She held a black plastic bag, like a shield, in front of it.""Everything was as pretty as a postcard. The trouble with you, I said to myself: you're always turning over the postcards and reading the messages on the underside. Written in invisible ink, in blood, in tears, with a black border around them, with postage due, unsigned, or signed with a thumbprint.""I believe you said you heard the shots.""Yes, I heard them.""Where were you at the time?""In my bathroom. I'd just finished taking a shower." With never-say-die eroticism, she tried to set up a diversion. "If you want proof of that, examine me. I'm clean.""Some other time. Stay clean until then.""In a way, I was scared. She was a hard blonde beauty fighting the world with two weapons, money and sex. Both of them had turned in her hands and scarred her. The scars were invisible, but I could sense the dead tissue. I wanted no part of her.""...He used to say he'd never tried to sell himself for fear that somebody might be tempted to but him.""...liquid pain in the holes he was using for eyes...""He hadn't wanted to be helped in the way I wanted to help him, the way that helped me. My vanity hadn't forgiven him for stealing his first car.""When Tom stood in my office with the lost look on him, the years blew away like pieces of newspaper. I saw myself when I was a frightened junior-grade hood in Long Beach, kicking the world in the shins because it wouldn't dance for me. I brushed him off."
Do You like book The Doomsters (2007)?
Lew Archer became involved with a mentally disturbed guy from a wealthy family. Violence followed latter whenever he showed up, but Archer strongly suspected it is not his fault, so the detective decided to interfere. Violence escalated. My biggest and the only question about this installment is, "What the hell happened to Archer between the previous book and this one?" What transformed him from a typical tough PI:into a preacher?It never felt to me Archer did any kind of investigation. He preached. He preached about Lost Innocent Souls that he could not save. He preached about the innocence of different people. In his defense he did manage to get knocked out twice. These knock outs are the only reason this novel can be qualified as either noir, or hardboiled. Otherwise it fails at both. Coming back to preaching, Archer is convinced everybody can be redeemed. Well I had a mild case of multiple personality disorder reading the book as Ross Macdonald himself makes a pretty good case of some people being way beyond redemption. As an example, (view spoiler)[Mrs. Hallman fully deserved everything she got and then some. (hide spoiler)]
—Evgeny
Beach week starting -- I've been reading these in sequence. Macdonald has said that The Doomsters was his breakthrough book -- the one where he stopped simply writing genre and became... a writer. For most of this book, I didn't feel that it was working. There was still the clichéd writing of the 1950's genre, the plot was too complicated and a bit implausible..., the characters predicatbly flat... and nothing really seemed new. Till about ch. 24 -- then, things did start to change... even so, I remained unconvinced until nearly the end, and the long monologue (no spoilers will be given here) brought everything together in a way that really was both new and disturbing - that is, in a way that was, as these things go, quite believable. By the end, a very good book.
—AC
This is the book where Macdonald really pulled out of Chandler's and Hammett's shadows. The Doomsters is also different from most Archer books in that this time the mystery has a very personal connection for Archer - we learn much more about the detective himself than the usual "divorced former cop" line tossed into all the other books. In fact, the climax and denouement might be read as something of a catharsis of the character himself. It's not quite a "reboot" of the series, but it is clear that Archer will be a different kind of figure in later outings than he has in the earlier books: less a knight errant and more a sort of Virgil who guides us into the hell of these families' twisted lives. One of the series' finest outings.
—Thomas
