A wealthy-looking woman came to hire Lew Archer to find her missing maid who supposedly stole some of her jewelry. She sounded fishy for everybody with intellect higher than that of a six-year-old child, so Archer had his reservations about taking the assignment, but it sounded simple and harmless enough - he was to just tail the maid and report on the people she saw to his client - so he accepted. As a special bonus for accepting the questionable assignment he gets to witness and participate in the full set of noir tropes first-hand. Please note that the only reason I talk about standard tropes here is to avoid spoilers as much as possible. Ross Macdonald can and does make them all look fresh and exciting. Femme fatale? I felt bad for her; she was just a woman trying to survive in a hostile environment. Tough gangster? I cannot say anything without giving huge spoilers, but take my word for it: he is not usual run-of-the-mill noir gangster. Families with skeletons in the closet?Plenty of them in here and I think the author is the grand master when it comes to this particular trope; he might have not invented it, but he most definitely perfected this one. This novel made me understand something which puzzled me for a long time. As much as I like classic noir I really could not care less about modern thrillers despite the fact that these two genres are fairly close related to each other, like cousins. Most of the modern thrillers are as straightforward as a shortest path between two points in Euclidean geometry. The hero moves in straight line literally crashing everything which stands in his/her way until the (happy) end. I have troubles suspending my disbelief as I know this is not how real life works.Take this book. It took me about three fourths of it just to understand what is going on - people with no connections to each other kept dying for seemingly no reason. This is coming from a person who played guess the villain with Agatha Christie books with some degree of success. I also challenge anybody to call this particular ending Happily Ever After and keep a straight face. So to summarize: this is the second book of the series in the row which confirmed my opinion of Ross Macdonald as a classic of noir.
It didn't take me long to recall that I had read this book but heh, it's Ross Macdonald. That's THE Ross Macdonald one of the icons of the hard-boiled/pulp world. One of the writers that today's most popular authors say was an influence in their decision and desire to write mysteries/thrillers/detective books. Lew Archer is the name of this P.I. who uses his head to solve complicated mysteries of "whodunit."I've copied this from Wiki, which read my mind except the naming of Lew. Now that mystery is solved, how Macdonald came up with Lew's name. Oh, as the norm those days especially, Macdonald's birth name was Kenneth Millar, and was born in California. "Macdonald mentions in the foreword to the Archer in Hollywood omnibus that his detective derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew(is) Wallace, author of Ben-Hur, though he was patterned on Philip Marlowe.Macdonald has been called the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Author Tom Rizzo has pointed out that Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them.[4] Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Critics have commented favorably on Macdonald's deft combination of the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.Was going to write something akin to what Wiki entered on Ross Macdonald's page, but why bother. The entry says it all. The Ivory Grin was worth a second read.
Archer knew the story was phony when the woman gave it to him. She wanted him to find a negro woman, a servant, who'd stolen some jewelry, nothing valuable enough to bring the police in, just sentimental stuff. Find her, follow her, let the boss know where she was so she could talk to her.The second story wasn't much better. The woman had quit her and knew some embarrassing things. She wanted her back.But she was offering a hundred dollars and his wallet was empty.Of course things weren't even close to whjat they seemed.A sleazy PI wanted to horn in, having been fired before Archer was offered the job, and he seemed to think more money was involved. He wanted to split the five thousand.Before he's figured out what going on, Archer has run across a woman with her throat cut, a body burned in a car wreck, already dead and doused with gas before the wreck, and a third man shot.A good edition of maybe the finest series of PI novels ever written.
—Randy
Smart and engrossing noir, a near-extinct style of American writing that will sadly leave us forever once James Elroy retires. Ross MacDonald possessed a full mastery of setting, dialogue, plot and character; he may be nearly forgotten these days and you may only find his novels in shabby secondhand stores, but few other writers ever made a grouchy reader like this guy feel as immersed and convinced of the reality of a novel. MacDonald created atmosphere that I can still taste and imagery that I can still see over 5 years after initially reading this book. Go to the shabby secondhand store that you frequent and find one of MacDonald's books today.
—Ryan
* * 1/2Much as I like Ross Macdonald's writing and the character of Archer, I found myself disappointed with this book, the third Archer book I've read. It's a shame because I really do like the series. Part of it is likely my fault, since I didn't start reading it right when I wanted to (had other books to finish first), and my reading was fragmented. However, I did find the plot kind of lacking in oomph, and the whole denouement felt a bit far-fetched. I felt about the same way I did when trying to listen to the audio version of Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler -- in both cases I found it hard to focus and muster up interest in the story, even when accounting for personal factors such as fragmented reading and the fact that I don't usually do well with audio.Still, along the way there were little glimmers of well-chosen description, as is Macdonald's trademark. Examples include saying someone is "warding off" a boring story, or portraying motels as "slumping dejectedly under optimistic names." (Of course, there are many more.) For these sorts of noteworthy quotes I award an extra half-star, then shake off this book and see if I have better luck with the next one.
—rabbitprincess
