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 seven or eight, 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, nothing lurid, no sensationalism. Instead it is well plotted, tight, and plausible. This one is quite complex, and probably not the first Lew Archer mystery to read if one is new to the series.I have read all of the Lew Archer novels at least twice over a period of twenty five years. While this is not one of my personal favorites, it is still superb. The characterizations are excellent. It flows smoothly, a real page turner, hard to put down. It is among the most complex, as complicated as, say, The Goodbye Look. 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.The year is 1969 and the plot starts innocently with Archer feeding peanuts to some birds on his patio. The door of a neighboring apartment opens and a young boy around six years old steps out. He is fascinated with the jays eating peanuts. Archer knows the people who own that apartment, and they do not have any children. The boy's mother, Jean Broadhurst, comes out to chat. Archer has never seen her before either. It turns out that she is friends with the owners of that apartment, she is separated from her husband, and she has brought the boy with her to spend a few days there. An unpleasant confrontation soon develops as the boy's father arrives in a car and virtually accuses Archer of having slept with his wife. The father has come to take the boy to visit his mother (the boy's grandmother) who is wealthy and lives on an estate of some tens of acres not too far away. Archer goes to a window in his apartment to watch them drive off, and sees there is a young woman also in the car. Who is she?Some hours pass. There is a smell of smoke in the air. As is so common in southern California in the dry season, a fire has started in the hills somewhere. Jean knocks on his door. She knows that Archer is a detective, and she has just learned that the fire is on her mother-in-law's property. More alarming, her mother-in-law, Mrs. Broadhurst, has not seen her son or grandson recently. Where are they? Jean hires Archer to find out.Before long Archer learns that Jean's husband has been murdered and placed in a shallow grave right at the border of the raging fire on Mrs. Broadhurst's property. Where is the boy? Who is the mysterious young woman who was with them? What does Mrs. Broadhurst's rather odd gardener know about it?We soon meet several adult couples in their early forties who are strangely linked with the Broadhursts due to events of fifteen years earlier. Their children, now in their twenties are linked in complicated ways. As often happens in a Lew Archer novel, some people are not what they seem, and the deep secrets of decades ago haunt the young people of today. All of this plays out against the metaphor of the raging fire. Highly recommended.
Lew Archer became a witness of a quarrel of a couple on the brink of a divorce related to their son. His mother reluctantly let his father to take the little guy to visit her mother-in-law. Shortly after they departed there was an announcement about forest fires right where the husband with his son were headed. Worried about her son, the wife asked Archer to check on his safely. This seemingly innocent request resulted in Archer uncovering a trail of seemingly unrelated dead people - from both the present and the past - killed in seemingly unrelated crimes as well as deeply troubled teens and their equally troubled parents. This is a typical novel of the series where dark past comes back to haunt the people in present. It has more than enough plot twists to make for a very engagement and exciting read with countless connections between lots of different people with different social standings all coming into play. All of these connections are so tightly weaved that I had to stop a couple of times during my read to make sure I still follow the development and I still remember who is who. The identity of the main villain revealed practically on the last page and it was a complete surprise to me. The only reason I rated this book with 4 stars as opposed to perfect 5-star rating was the fact that I was not convinced by the villain's motives that came out somewhat weak. Still is it an engagement and highly recommended read. I have only two books of the series left and I plan to start on the next one right away.
What do You think about The Underground Man (1996)?
I haven't made my way through the entire Archer series yet, but this may be the most Lew Archer of the Archer books I've read so far. This was the book that garnered the Eudora Welty endorsement in the New York Times, the one that said MacDonald isn't just a writer of detective novels, but of literature (as pretentious and elitist as THAT sounds). Perhaps because of the hype, retrospective critics seem to have down-rated this book a bit in favor of The Galton Case and The Chill. However, I find this book slightly more satisfying than those. Although all the later Lew Archer books sort of depend upon untangling the complicated, hidden, and interrelated pasts of a number of characters, I found the relationships in this book a good deal more plausible than in those other books. Also, I thought the introduction of the constant threat of external natural peril (raging forest fires, floods, and mudslides) as a background to the action of the story highly effective.The one major drawback to this particular book is MacDonald's periodic invocation of hot topics of the era (the early 70's) like lost youth experimenting in drugs and birds being poisoned by DDT. To me, this felt almost like when those old Law & Order episodes came advertised as "ripped from the headlines!" It distracted from the unwinding of the relationships and emotional lives of the characters, and added little to the overall story. However, there's so much to like in The Underground Man, and I give it the highest rating possible.
—Thomas
It has taken me this long, and I'm unsure how avidly I will pursue his other titles, but I'm happy I finally came across my first Ross Macdonald. This particular book is dated and stylish with an occasional lapse into inelegance - the ending is so conventionally standard that it comes to the point of cliche, but a reader must appreciate it for what it is and when it was written. A sampling of the 'hard-boiled' dialogue from an interrogated dame: "She was just a little old lady in a little old house on a little old street. It was kind of a pretty street, with purple flowers on the trees." Can't you just hear it in the voice of a film noir starlet? More dialogue from the same dame, one page later (and here we get a taste of the 'dated' nature of the book): "I was strung out on an Einstein trip...When you go all the way out, past the last star, and space loops back on you." And one more page over, after this same dame becomes worried that our private eye will take back the money he bribed her with: "Not waiting for my answer, she stood up and dropped the pink robe to the floor. Her body was young, high-breasted, narrow-waisted, almost too slender. But there were bruises on her arms and thighs like the hash-marks of hard service. She was a dilapidated girl." Dilapidated girl?! How fantastic is that? It sounds like the title to a good indie band song. Anyway, as I alluded to earlier, as I read, the images flashed back to me in black and white film noir. I could almost hear film noir scores in the background. This was a pleasant way to enjoy a book, but it stoked no fires. In closing, one more line: "I scattered the peanuts out the window and watched the jays come swooping into the yard. It was like watching a flashing blue explosion-in-reverse that put the morning world together again." Is it me, or does "explosion-in-reverse" almost ruin that sentence? And yet at the same time, you see it immediately, right? I like that about Macdonald's writing - but this is why I felt like his style sometimes slipped.
—Unbridled
After so many Lew Archer books, it feels like Macdonald has at last fallen into a recognizable pattern. I was disappointed that my need to know 'whodunnit' was so much less urgent than it was in his earlier books, that the facts of the case were re-stated too frequently, and that the characters were either too plentiful, too indistinguishable, or both. But stronger than ever was Macdonald's insight into human nature. His plot leans heavily on the mistrust between youth and adult (in the early seventies, when it was written) and he manages to depict both sides with equal favor, detraction, and realism.
—Brett James
