Ross Macdonald's reputation is that he took the noirish, hardboiled private detective story pioneered by Dashiel Hammett and refined by Raymond Chandler, to psychological depths they only hinted at. A Euripides to their Aeschylus and Sophocles, as it were. If that's true, then that transformation took place in his subsequent Lew Archer novels. In The Drowning Pool he's still in Chandler mode, though there are hints of what's to come.A beautiful woman, Maude Slocum, walks into Archer's office and asks him to find out who is behind a mysterious letter sent to her alleging that she's two-timing her husband. As always happens in these kinds of books, Mrs. Slocum is rather reluctant to give Archer a straight answer on who might have sent the letter or whether its allegations are true. Archer decides to investigate anyway, and through the ruse of pretending to be the employee of an agent who might be interested in buying film rights to the amateur play her husband is starring in, gets to meet the rest of the family: Maude's husband, James; their daughter, Cathy; and James' mother, Olivia, the first Mrs. Slocum. It is the last who is found at the bottom of the pool after the party where Archer meets the family. Mrs. Slocum is fished out of the pool, and a number of secrets rise to the surface along with her corpse, secrets which will lead to several more deaths before Archer solves the mystery.Macdonald here is playing a variation on a theme, and not a dramatically different variation at that. After being hired, Archer drives from L.A. to the suburbs where his client lives. He runs into a series of shady characters, hops in and out of seedy joints, encounters another femme fatale, who introduces a subplot that will eventually tie into the main plot. He gets beat up a few times, beats up a few other people, comes into possession of an important item only to lose it by carelessness. He winds up holding a lot of cash. He drives around some more. The cops start out wary of him and only grow more distrustful. He drives around more. There's a rich guy who has decidedly lousy taste in acquaintances, a taste which allows him to keep his own manicured hands clean, or at least free of all but a few flecks of dirt. There's even a fake doctor running a clinic which could do with a visit or fifty from the health board. It sounds like a formula, and it is. But what makes it so enjoyable is that Macdonald has a firm grasp of the formula, knows its ins and outs. And of course, there's the writing. I'll quote just one passage: "There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure. Except that there were too many Ararats, and I was no Noah." Archer has this thought while swimming in the ocean. And he's right, too. When the flood comes for Archer, getting above it won't save him. He knows the world could do with some water therapy; but he also knows that there is no guarantee in this world that the righteous would be saved. His cynicism lasts exactly until he realizes it won't furnish him a raft. Macdonald's writing is just compact and expressive enough, like that. It doesn't have the lyricism or the irony of the late Chandler, the Chandler of The Long Goodbye. Nor does he here try to use his characters and setting to offer a social commentary on the transformation of post-War America, which Chandler does in his masterpiece. The elements are there, but they're not the focus. But one quality he does share is a certain literacy. Macdonald's characters are reasonably intelligent people, and he assumes his readers are, too. Thus his novel has several literary and historical allusions that he flow naturally from his characters lips or minds. I mentioned the Flood allusion already. One character mentions Coleridge, another Proust, a third Oedipus. There are some more. This is small stuff, but I liked the idea that the people in this book might have read a few books themselves, been to college, and had it rub off on them. Macdonald, or, I should say, Kenneth Millar, the man who used "Ross Macdonald" as his nom de plume, had a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Michigan. It's a skill to wear one's learning without becoming a pedant. Millar has that skill, and he imparts it to his characters.Since I'm comparing Macdonald to Chandler here, I'd like to point out two more differences. The first is that unlike with Chandler, I didn't get much of a sense of time and place from this novel. Chandler's novels are deeply evocative of a time and place. As noted above, his greatest novel is in one respect a meditation on the social transformations that characterized that time and place. The Drowning Pool was published in 1950, but there's no real sense that it has anything to do with 1950. Sure, one character mentions that he fought at Guadalcanal, but that's about it. Chandler makes you feel that it's 1948. Macdonald, not as much. Perhaps he's less indicative because he doesn't have to be. If you're writing in 1950 for people reading in 1950, you don't have to tell them it's 1950. The other difference between Chandler and Macdonald can be found in why Olivia Slocum is murdered. Chandler's novels aren't free of family drama (e.g., The Big Sleep and The Little Sister), but in his novels the family drama is simply the stimulus for what happens. Things happen in the family, but not because of the family; there are other motives. In The Drowning Pool, family is the motive. Mrs. Slocum drowns because a wave that has been building up for years finally crashes upon her family; she's simply the first victim. The secrets (one of which is fairly obvious to anyone with a basic familiarity with these sorts of stories) and resentments then wash up on the shore like so much debris from a shipwreck. There's no telling when the dam will burst, which psychic wound will be the one that will fester and not scar. Plumbing the depths of the tortured psyches of families, with their traumas, hatreds, fears, secrets, resentments, buried and not so buried, became Macdonald's trademark, his claim to fame. He doesn't plumb here. This is more like wading. But at the end of the novel there's a sense that the water goes much deeper, and that Macdonald -- and Archer -- will be plunging back in, and deeper in, sooner than later. You'll want to dive in with them. But you may want to come fully outfitted in diving gear, and with a bright light to shine in the depths to show the way. It's murky water ahead. Published Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Maybe a 3.75 on this one. The Drowning Pool is Ross Macdonald's second book in his Lew Archer series, but it's my first foray into this author's work. After this book, I think that Archer is a guy I will enjoy reading more about. With eighteen series novels and two short story collections, there's a lot about this world-weary gumshoe to explore.Lew Archer is called upon to investigate an anonymous poison pen letter sent to his client, Maude Slocum. Maude's beyond worried about her mother-in-law, Olivia, finding any more letters that might be sent, since she, her husband James, and their daughter Cathy are reliant upon Olivia's financial support and live in her house. Archer's been given very little to go on, but he wangles an invitation to a party at Mrs. Slocum's house, allowing him to size up both the situation and the people who attend, one of whom just might be the letter writer. When he decides to call it quits for the night, he takes himself and a fellow passenger he's picked up near the house down to a bar in an oil-rich California town called Nopal Valley, only to be picked up as part of a murder investigation, since it seems that Olivia has drowned in the backyard swimming pool. As it turns out, Archer was the last to see her alive, so the police really want to talk to him. But Olivia's death is merely the tip of this iceberg of a case, and as Archer soon discovers, only the beginning of a number of deaths that ensue as he doggedly tries to get to the truth. The Drowning Pool must have caused quite a stir when published in 1950, with its crystal-clear references to homosexuality, prostitution, dysfunctional families, and illicit sex. Macdonald also explores the corporate world here along with the rich and extremely powerful people who inhabit it, and the defacing of once beautiful California landscapes. Character-wise, Archer is intriguing. He hates phonies. He's on the front lines of understanding what human beings can do to themselves and to each other, but at the same time, he demonstrates compassion and empathy when people open up to him about their troubles. He says in this story that he doesn't know what justice is, but "Truth interests me, though. Not general truth if there is any, but the truth of particular things. Who did what when why." and in this book, his need to get to the "truth of particular things" lands him in hot water more than once, but he never stops looking until the end. Speaking of the end, I'm not so sure it's the best ending this book could have had, but as Archer himself notes, "The happy endings and the biggest oranges were the ones that California saved for export."I love discovering "new" authors, and I liked The Drowning Pool enough to merit another go at Macdonald. The plot is heavy and convoluted, but well worth it in the long run. Recommended mainly to readers of hard-boiled fiction, but people looking to connect with classic American crime fiction will like this one as well.
What do You think about The Drowning Pool (1996)?
This is a swimming pool:What is it good for? You can use it to show your social status (I challenge anybody to find a mansion of a really rich person without one). You can drown the old ladies in one - the kind which everybody hates and who sits on piles of money her close relatives can really use. Finally you can just swim in there. Let us talk about the second case.Lew Archer is a private detective who makes his humble living mostly collecting evidence for divorce cases. This time a frightened woman named Maude Slocum came to him offering his a small sum of money to investigate a poison pen letter addressed to her husband where a "concerned citizen" was warning the latter about his wife's less than discrete behavior with another man. Lew Archer's task is to prevent such letters in the future and finding its author. Archer decided the family itself would be a good starting point only to have the dead body I mentioned above promptly showing. From this point on the guy has to deal with corrupted police, even more killings, an oil tycoon who bought the law in a small town wholesale, and other related exciting things. He also had to study the history of the family of his client - and it was not all fun and roses. I want to make one thing very clear. This is a very good book and I enjoyed reading it a lot. The plot was very twisty and moved along at a fast pace. The descriptions of places were good enough to really make me feel I was transported in late forties California, yet not long enough to stop the plot from moving. So why only 3 stars? Because when I read it I could not help comparing this book with the classic of genre Raymond Chandler and Lew Archer with Philip Marlowe. It does not quite reach the level of the latter. Please do not think this is bad as practically nothing written in noir is on the same level as Chandler's prose and the phrase "almost on Chandler's level" is actually high praise indeed. Another very minor reason I failed to care about Maude Slocum at all. Archer did care about her, but he could not make me do it. In the conclusion this is a good book and I eagerly await to start reading the next novel of the series.
—Evgeny
Unlike the recent Thompson book The Grifters (set in the same time period and locations) which I found a bit too Dostoevsky-like, Ross MacDonald delivers well crafted, excellently plotted novels that leave one little to doubt as to the skill of this author. Many a writer of mystery/crime novels have MacDonald on their favorites reading list (I researched this, and in fact came to MacDonald because of this).Unlike Burke who brings a certain sense of literature to his Robicheaux novels, MacDonald's Lew Archer series are straight-forward, hard boiled mystery/detective novels all the way. Just when you think you could use a little dialogue, MacDonald delivers. Just when you think you know what'll happen next, MacDonald dispels everything you thought you knew. Just when you think you could use a bit more exposition, MacDonald delivers finely honed sentences that make the novel come alive in your mind. The pacing of his style is superb, timed just right, delivering punch bowls of satisfaction to sip from.Lew Archer is a curious private eye, seeming to shun involvement with women though he is attracted to them which leaves tension in the minds of the reader. Women often are the culprits in his novels and Archer seems to have a sixth sense about them, providing both comfort and a hefty dose of suspicion where it comes to dealing with the dames. He has a good relationship with the various police forces (Arches used to be a cop), often teaming up with law enforcement and so unlike the traditional rivalry between the private eye and the police in other detective novels. Lew Archer delivers justice, every time for both the private citizens and the police forces with whom he works.I highly recommend reading the Lew Archer series. And for those reading this review...if you've read this review, you've read all the Lew Archer reviews.
—Harry
1950. Maude Slocum opens this tale at the doorway to Lew Archer's office. "Thirty-five and still in the running," the detective surmises. Maude is scared. She's intercepted a letter to her husband calling him a cuckold. Who would send such a letter and why? She hires Archer to find out.Archer drives north of LA to the fictitious community of Quinto, next to the oil town of Nopal, where the Slocums live on property awash in oil. Slocum's mother-in-law refuses to let the big oil company ruin her land by drilling. The Slocum's and their daughter live with old Mrs Slocum. Only Mr Slocum seems happy with the arrangement. Archer attends a party at the Slocums where family and friends celebrate the opening of a local play starring Mr Slocum. That night old Mrs Slocum turns up drowned at the bottom of the swimming pool. It could be an accident, but the old woman never went to the pool alone. Suspects are the son and daughter-in-law of course because they stand to gain the most from opening up the land to drilling. But a chauffeur has gone missing and his hat was found near the pool. Archer's investigation takes him on a tour of the Slocum family estate, of the underbelly of the neighboring boom town, and of the extravagant lifestyle of the oil company owner. This is not the 1950's of Jerry Mathers as the Beave.An early work by Macdonald and maybe his best.
—M.L. Rudolph
