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Book Review: FIND A VICTIM (1954) by Ross MacDonald

11/3/2021

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​Find a Victim, the fifth Lew Archer mystery, showcases many of the strengths that make Ross MacDonald’s stories so rewarding, including a carefully calibrated (and complex) plot that maneuvers the California private investigator through a relentless series of twists and turns. Characterization and psychology are always important elements for the author, and the way MacDonald – the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar – sketches each actor in his cast through an economy of dialogue, action, and incident is impressive and entertaining. Victim begins quickly and irresistibly, with Archer picking up a bloodied Latino truck driver who has been shot and left for dead in a ditch. Soon, the P.I. is enmeshed in a case where the theft of a truckload of stolen whiskey is only a preamble.
 
Suspicion for the murderous heist quickly lands on a bar and motel owner named Kerrigan, whose unusually large and insured order of liquor could give him the payday he needs to leave his wife and disappear with Anne Meyer, a girlfriend he employed at the motel. But Anne has been missing for a week prior to the theft, and a small-time hood named Bosey knocks Archer out to dissuade him from further investigation. Undeterred, the detective collects two additional suspects who may have roles in a potential conspiracy: Las Cruces’ Sheriff Church, who might be bending (or breaking) the rules of law and order, and Anne Meyer’s father, who owns the trucking company and is rumored to have sexually attacked his daughter when she was a teenager. The tragic solution pays neat tribute to the Stephen Crane quote MacDonald has chosen to preface the story: 

“A man feared that he might find an assassin. Another that he might find a victim. One was more wise than the other.”    
A couple barriers prevented me from becoming fully engaged in this story the way I had with the author’s previous title, 1952’s masterly noir novel The Ivory Grin. First, the tone is both familiar and estranged. The ingredients for a great Lew Archer story seem to be here, especially in the author’s talent for moving his gumshoe effortlessly from incident to interview, from altercation to confession. There are no wasted (or uninteresting) scenes, and Archer is propelled throughout, accumulating clues and making connections with each chapter to lead him into the next one.
 
And yet the story proves a little elusive even as it is mostly logical, and there are not many characters sympathetic enough to justify Archer hanging around and being routinely threatened and roughed up. Tony Aquista, the dying truck driver, makes a dramatic entrance but leaves a fleeting impression. Kerrigan, Bosey, and an on-the-run druggie named Jo Summer all appear slippery, corrupt, and not worth redemption.  Only one person seems worth defending: Hilda Church, the sheriff’s vulnerable wife and sister to the missing Anne. 
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But the real reason for the off-kilter feel may be due to pressure from the publisher. According to information from Tom Nolan’s biography of Millar/MacDonald (1999), the author was tasked to rewrite Find a Victim substantially for Alfred A. Knopf, as the publishing house wanted more Mickey Spillane-styled violence and gunplay. MacDonald capitulated, and the result is a rather forced mix of astute characterization and plotting interrupted by two gratuitous shoot-outs.
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Narratively, Lew Archer does not need to ambush and kill in cold blood a quartet of criminals who have double-crossed Bosey, but he does just that. Mike Hammer would approve, and apparently the editors at Knopf did too. (Two notes: the fated bandits are characterless, only appearing in the ambush scene so MacDonald can meet his Spillane quota; and this is the first time in the series where Archer shoots to kill in a situation other than one of self-defense.)
 
At the plot’s conclusion, MacDonald is firmly back to writing what he intended and what he knows best. There is a melancholy, almost a pity generated for the characters left standing, people who made poor but understandable choices and are now paying the price for it. Find a Victim isn’t a bad Lew Archer book, it’s just not the cohesive, contemplative one that Ross MacDonald would have delivered if he had been left alone and allowed to craft another independent, high-quality story without editorial interference.

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Book Review: THE IVORY GRIN (1952) by Ross MacDonald

1/27/2021

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For anyone searching for a representative Lew Archer mystery from Ross MacDonald, for a title that showcases the author’s considerable literary merits and shows just how masterfully he could plot and write, one need look no further than 1952’s The Ivory Grin. Speaking personally, I find it a stronger and more intriguing book than the three novels preceding Grin, although they each have much to recommend. This one starts as so many do, with a woman who can’t (or shouldn’t) be trusted visiting Archer’s office and commissioning him to find somebody. In this case, the petitioner is a brassy nouveau riche who wants the private investigator to find a black maid who, she alleges, absconded with some jewelry. Archer sets out to tail Lucy Champion, an attractive young African-American with a nursing certification, and soon discovers that there is more to the story than missing bracelets. The detective finds Lucy in a motel room, dead on the floor, and the case soon takes on more suspects as Archer works to link the recent murder with the prior disappearance of Charles Singleton, a war veteran and heir to a considerable fortune.

MacDonald is known for his complicated narratives and wry humor, and both are to be found in abundance here. What I find admirable is that this tale’s plot is indeed complex, but just labyrinthine enough to keep the reader always attentive but never actually lost along the way. One scene propels the P.I. into his next encounter, which allows the story to unfold at a steady and carefully crafted clip. With Grin especially, the author achieves a highly satisfying symmetry by the plotline’s conclusion, with character actions and reactions creating a tragic inevitability. There’s also a triangle with a fourth character at its apex that gives the outcome a geometric neatness; to say more, or to identify who occupies which corner, would spoil the surprises in store.

But what elevates The Ivory Grin from its pulp origins into a more literary arena is MacDonald’s no-nonsense observations and descriptions that provide a very believable snapshot of American race relations in the early 1950s. There’s no preaching here, and no didactic moral, just dozens of details: the casually dismissive sheriff of a young black woman’s murder; Archer’s belief (via evidence and logic) that Lucy’s boyfriend Alex did not kill her, even though he fled from the scene; client Una's initial accusation of theft, meant to be taken without question by the upper-class accuser; and the cold truth that Lucy’s death is ultimately insignificant to the cast of wealthy white people who have larger, class-rooted secrets to conceal. The story may have been written by a white man and might feature a white protagonist (and ultimately tell a white story), but Ross MacDonald is intensely interested in exploring this culture of double standards. If he wasn’t, he would not have bothered to deliver consistently illuminating descriptions in his prose. Take this sketch of a "beautiful" city divided by race and class: 

The highway was a rough social equator bisecting the community into lighter and darker hemispheres. Above it in the northern hemisphere lived the whites who owned and operated the banks and churches, clothing and grocery and liquor stores. In the smaller section below it, cramped and broken up by ice plants, warehouses, laundries, lived the darker ones, the Mexicans and Negroes who did most of the manual work in Bella City and its hinterland.
And in the next paragraph, the author describes the denizens of East Hidalgo Street:
Housewives black, brown, and sallow were hugging parcels and pushing shopping carts on the sidewalk. Above them a ramshackle house, with paired front windows like eyes demented by earthquake memories, advertised Rooms for Transients on one side, Palm Reading on the other. A couple of Mexican children, boy and girl, strolled hand in hand in a timeless noon on their way to an early marriage.
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That last line is a sweet, poetic turn of phrase, made nicer because it allows a moment of happiness to visit a few souls from a population otherwise defined by toil and troubled living. Understand that The Ivory Grin isn’t a racial or sociocultural polemic; it is first and foremost an absorbing mystery, well worth finding and experiencing seventy years later. It shows a hard-boiled crime writer at the top of his game, and gives the always introspective but never opinionated Lew Archer a reason to be an anthropologist just as much as a gumshoe. It is Archer’s, and MacDonald’s, keen understanding of people and their often contrary, petty, and pitiable ways that allows him to solve the mystery while recognizing enough of humanity (in Lucy, in Alex) to not give up on the human race for good. Highly recommended.

Tracy K. has reviewed this title over at her great blog, Bitter Tea and Mystery.
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The Last of 2018 - and Looking Ahead from Here

12/31/2018

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Do I dare define 2018 in one word? If I were to be so bold, that word would probably be busy. Not chaotic, really, or exhausting – although it was a little of that – but just plain-and-simple busy would work best. It was this year that I moved from multiple adjunct teaching jobs to one full-time, office-hours academic advising job, which meant less grading but far more paperwork and student appointments. And I still teach an online class here and there, which further takes time away from personal projects.
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Nevertheless, 2018 proved a very good year for writing, with three stories published (and/or e-published) and available to all. My new tale "The Last Ferry", which I wrote in February, appears in Landfall: The Best New England Crime Stories of 2018 from Level Best Books. And I was delighted to learn that "The Widow Cleans House", my first published short story in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, was chosen for reprint in the anthology Terror at the Crossroads, released in October by Penny Publications/Eris Press.

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Also débuting this year was my first long-form effort, and my first LGBTQ romantic comedy to boot. Knights Erring, available from Less Than Three Press, follows three friends who bet each other that they can't uphold the tenets of chivalry (including poverty, chastity, and obedience) for two weeks. The story made it through multiple drafts and grew considerably, and I'm very happy with the current version.

My Reading List – an annual compulsion that I started in 2005 when I decided to note every book, script, or story collection I finished from that point forward – tells me that I read 64 titles this year, which is less than in previous years, but still surprising given the sheer busyness of 2018. (See Paragraph One.) I would note the following items as standouts:

  • Beartown (2016) – Fredrik Backman's unsentimental exploration of a small northern town that lives - and almost destroys itself - for its high school hockey team
  • The Moving Target (1949) – Ross MacDonald's first Lew Archer mystery
  • Exit, Pursued by a Bear (2012) – Lauren Gunderson's darkly comic play about a woman taking revenge on her abusive husband
  • The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House (2008) by Laton McCartney – why would this story of a corrupt president and a Republican congress trying to hide and bury illegal dealings seem familiar?

Honorable mentions go to Bodies from the Library (2018), a fun collection of lesser-known stories by famous classic mystery authors edited by Tony Medawar, and Gregory McDonald's buoyant sequel Confess, Fletch (1976), which is twistier and more satisfying than his solid earlier effort.
And it was great to return to a book by Gladys Mitchell. I haven't spent much time in her company lately, so I made the excuse to remedy that by launching the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group. I spent a wonderful (and busy) November discussing and dissecting the 1929 Mrs. Bradley whodunit farce The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop. I loved all of the topics and conversational roads that I likely would never have traveled if I had revisited the book on my own, and I am looking forward to the next group reading event, probably in March or April of 2019. I'll choose a 1930s title and announce it the month before; I already have some suggestions from fans, and there are a lot of solid tales to choose from in that decade!

Finally, I will end by offering a version of the familiar New Year's Resolutions. In addition to hosting another Mitchell Mystery Reading Group event (two if I can manage it), 2019 will be the year I finally submit an entry for the Black Orchid Novella writing contest, sponsored by the Rex Stout appreciation club The Wolfe Pack. Before that, I should deliver a completed Act Two (currently in progress) for a stage comedy that I'm writing for a regional theater company. I'd like to also push myself to complete two new crime-themed short stories next year. And I want to keep my eyes open for new writing and contest opportunities, something that I don't always look for as rigorously as I should.

I hope everyone has a 2019 that rivals, nay exceeds, the success and joy that 2018 (hopefully) provided. And if your 2018 was less than you wanted it to be, you have every reason to be optimistic as we flip the calendar and turn the page together!

Peace and best wishes,
Jason Half
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Book Review: THE DROWNING POOL (1950) by Ross MacDonald

7/22/2018

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Just last month I tried Ross MacDonald's 1949 crime story The Moving Target, which marked the début of his series private detective Lew Archer. Everything about Target was solidly impressive: a twisty plotline, memorably hard-boiled narration and dialogue, characters both highborn and low, flawed to the point of contemporary tragedy. These same elements are found in the 1950 follow-up The Drowning Pool, which is still impressive and manages to deliver a moodier atmosphere and a story with even more shadows and skeletons.

Archer receives an office visit from a woman named Maude Slocum, and after some coaxing she reveals her problem: she has intercepted an anonymous note addressed to her husband accusing her of extramarital exercises. Fearing there may be more to come, Maude asks Archer to find the writer and deal with the matter. But she gives the detective a very short – practically strangling – leash: he is not to talk to any of her acquaintances as a detective and she won't answer whether the accusation in the letter is true.

Archer compromises, and introduces himself into Maude Slocum's moneyed world as a talent scout for a movie studio. Maude's socialite husband James is an amateur actor performing the lead in a new play by friend and director Francis Marvell at the Quinto Theatre. While eavesdropping on a rehearsal, Archer witnesses a behind-the-scenes struggle between handsome grifter Patrick Reavis and a teen girl who turns out to be Maude's daughter Cathy. Maude, James, and Cathy are all living on the estate of James's mother, Olivia Slocum, a wealthy woman who is not generous with allowances for anyone, personal or economic.

On the night of a house party, playwright Marvell pulls from a darkened swimming pool the lifeless body of matriarch Olivia, a woman who never went swimming and feared the water. Pat Reavis's cap is found in the bushes nearby, and Reavis himself had legged it off the property right at the crucial time, hitching a ride with Archer into town. The detective finds himself quickly enmeshed in an escalating series of events, as one death begets another and lives built on play-acting and lies bring brutal consequences.

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For a story with water (and oil) at its heart, The Drowning Pool ironically develops through a calculated slow burn of plot and character. For the first third of the story, Lew Archer is less of an actor and more of a fly on the wall, observing his client's comfortable but unsatisfying lifestyle and the restlessness of those surrounding her. It is a quiet, introspective approach that I have heard MacDonald will continue to use throughout his series, with later entries emphasizing themes of social amorality and bankruptcy and minimizing traditional hard-boiled action. When the murder of Olivia Slocum kicks off events that bring Archer into conflict with Chief of Police Ralph Knudson and a corpulent oil magnate named Kilbourne (and his sadistic henchman Melliotes), the book's mood switches quickly from contemplative to grimly active. Before the story is finished, characters will be shot, burned, drugged, beaten, and tortured, all in the name of greed and vanity.

I think it is this shift in mood and plotting that makes me feel The Drowning Pool falls just a little short. MacDonald's writing here is excellent; he uses his main character's wary first-person loner detective viewpoint just as well (if not better) than Raymond Chandler does, and the fact that once more Archer takes a case that brings him face to face with petty people and moral decay immediately makes the reader simpatico with Archer's objectivity. It's the only way to escape getting poisoned yourself, by money or sex or power. But The Moving Target felt more balanced, maintaining its pace masterfully from start to finish. (I also enjoyed the concept of looking for an unloved and unworthy kidnapping victim more than looking into a family whose members assure mutual misery for each other.) Notably, it is Pool that most Internet readers agree is the superior of the two; there is an excellent review posted by Max Cairnduff on his site Pechorin's Journal.

One other detail: Ross MacDonald's writing is indeed so strong and enjoyable that I adopted a reading practice that I had never tried before. For this title, I found the audiobook online but gave myself a 50-page print book lead in the story. I would then listen to recent chapters, a couple at a time, as I read through the book, finishing the pages first and the audio account a close second. This was a really satisfying approach, as the audio let me revisit and appreciate those lines and plot twists as the story was still unfolding. And the lines and twists are worth the review, full of intelligence and cool observation. I end with this example – Max C. includes the same paragraph in his review – where Archer surveys Nopal Valley, a town that has "benefited" from a landscape-changing oil boom:

The oil wells from which the sulphur gas rose crowded the slopes on both sides of the town. I could see them from the highway as I drove in: the latticed triangles of the derricks where the trees had grown, the oil-pumps nodding and clanking where cattle had grazed. Since 'thirty-nine or 'forty, when I had seen it last, the town had grown enormously, like a tumor. It had thrust out shoots in all directions: blocks of match-box houses in raw new housing developments and the real estate shacks to go with them, a half-mile gauntlet of one-story buildings along the highway: veterinarians, chiropractors, beauty shops, marketerias, restaurants, bars, liquor stores. There was a new four-story hotel, a white frame gospel tabernacle, a bowling alley wide enough to house a B-36. The main street had been transformed by glass brick, plastic, neon. A quiet town in a sunny valley had hit the jackpot hard, and didn't know what to do with itself at all.
I'm looking forward to the next Lew Archer crime story, The Way Some People Die.
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