All of the Lew Archer mysteries by Ross Macdonald are very good, and all but two or three are excellent. This one is in the top three of four, which means it is one of the best mystery novels ever written, and beyond that, it is an excellent novel, period. As always with Lew Archer, there is practically no violence, no gore, no sensationalism. Instead it is well plotted, tight, and plausible. (I didn't say probable.) This one is quite complex, and probably not the first Lew Archer mystery to read if one is new to the series.The characterizations are excellent. It flows smoothly, a real page turner, hard to put down. It is quite complex, and the reader would be rewarded by keeping a note pad and jotting down the first time and place a character is mentioned, and other key points, such as who is related to whom. I did and it really helps. But beyond the mystery story aspects, no other mystery novelist that I am aware of has so many insightful observations, compelling similes, and such deep observations on the human condition.I have read all of the Lew Archer novels at least twice over a period of twenty five years. This is one of my personal favorites, even though it may not be the absolute best, if there is such a thing. Others in my list of favorites are Sleeping Beauty, The Wycherly Woman, and The Zebra-Striped Hearse. The plot starts in 1969 with Archer being called to the home of a wealthy family. They were away for a weekend and a valuable gold jewel case has been stolen. It soon becomes apparent that it was an inside job, and suspicion quickly falls on their only child, Nick, now 23 and trying to finish college. He has an apartment at the nearby college. We soon learn that Nick had a troubled childhood, and just what the trouble was might be relevant to the current theft. Gradually a complicated story develops involving four families who have known each other since the mid 1940s. They were linked then by an embezzlement followed quickly by flight into Mexico by more than one person. About the same time, someone was mysteriously run down by a car. As the years pass, four murders occur.As often happens in a Lew Archer novel, some people are not what they seem, and the deep secrets of 25 years ago come back to haunt the young people of today. It doesn't get any better than this, folks.
Until now I’ve only read two Archer novels (curiously, and coincidentally, the two Paul Newman turned into films) and though I enjoyed them, they didn’t make me whoop with joy. I liked them, thought they had good points, but haven’t rushed on to check out the others.Having read ‘The Goodbye Look’ I now understand why his fans hold him such high regard. MacDonald’s brilliance – certainly in this novel – lies in taking that Tolstoy maxim that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” and turning into detective fiction. What starts out as seemingly a minor case (the theft of a gold box) unearths long lost family secrets and brings out the after effects of forgotten crimes. I’d been told how fantastic MacDonald was on psychology, and that is indeed the case. All crime fiction characters need to have strange and unusual motivations, it’s what red herrings are based upon, but in this book they’re not just a contrivance of the plot. Everything that the characters do and say feels real and not just there for the sake of misdirection.The prose is great as well, with many pithy phrases and wonderful descriptions, and in short I found the whole thing a treat. Without a doubt MacDonald moved into space created by Chandler, but I think he goes in a different direction with it. Rather than the gallant knight walking mean streets because somebody has to, Archer is almost a cipher just trying to make his way through in the world. That vagueness of character can be somewhat frustrating to readers, but I think that blankness explains why people do open up so easily to him. It also helps justify why he gets up the next morning and does it all again, it’s not through Marlowe’s noble calling, but just because – what else does he have?I won’t delay so long before my next Archer novel.
Do You like book The Goodbye Look (2000)?
Lew Archer was hired to investigate a burglary at a house of a rich family. Rich people always avoid bad publicity like plague, so he was supposed to be very discreet in his investigation. To give you an idea about the level of discretion he was hired by a wife through the family lawyer with the husband having no clue about this and Archer was to keep him this way. A dead body showed up soon with the murder weapon being the same gun as the one used fifteen years ago in another unsolved murder. Dead bodies from the past and the present keep showing up. The common theme for most of the novels of the series is children who pay for sins of the fathers (and mothers). The dirty past when disturbed results in yet more dirt and its cover-up by all means possible. I think Macdonald has perfected this particular trope; if anybody does it better I have not read such books yet. This book features another teen girl in love who behaves like a normal human being and not like a spoiled retarded selfish brat typical for modern YA literature. Please read this not just for a good mystery, but also to learn how to write good characters most people can relate to. Taken along with other books of the series this one is fairly average: there are better ones and there are worse ones. This means 4 stars rating from me.
—Evgeny
I think that MacDonald's The Zebra-Striped Hearse was the first mystery novel I ever read. I found it in the library - must have been attracted by the strange name. Once I had read it, I was hooked on the author and read all his books. This is one of the later ones. Lew Archer, the detective, is somewhat jaded, but not totally cynical, and does care about his clients, especially the younger members of the family. In this case, he's hired by an attorney to investigate the theft of a gold box and some letters. Some of the people involved in the case wind up dead, and his investigation leads back to a 15 year old murder. There are quite a few people with links to the crimes and to each other, and I sort of wish I had made a flow-chart of the connections. As in many of the later novels, this old murder had an effect on the son of the family who were robbed. I'm looking forward to rereading many of these mysteries.
—Vicki Cline
The classic Ross MacDonald plot: a revolver used in a recent murder is found to be connected to a fifteen-year old homicide, and suspicions swirl around a young person so emotionally scarred by the past that he is convinced he must be guilty of something. (As one of the characters says, "My whole time here, it's been like living in a haunted house." In the Ross McDonald world, she could be speaking about all of us, every single human life.) Once again the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons, and detective Lew Archer is there not only to unravel the intricate tangle of facts that binds the characters together but also to serve as a laconic Greek chorus for the modern tragedy that his unraveling will inevitably reveal. This time the cast of characters is a little too large and the skein of facts a little too tangled, for my taste, but the resolution is both surprising and plausible, the conclusion both haunting and satisfying.
—Bill Kerwin
