Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer

[Calenture]

The Underground Man (1971, this Fontana edition 1973)

More near-incomprehensible lightning-paced thrills from the other Macdonald.

Lew Archer descends the steps to his garden one morning to find himself embroiled in an ugly family scene. Stanley Broadhurst has come to collect his son Ronny from his estranged wife, Jean.

Stan drives off with young Ronny and a blonde in a yellow skirt, headed for his mother's Santa Teresa mountain home. But they don't make it. When the radio brings news of a fire broken out in the Santa Teresa area, and a phone call to Stan's mother reveals that he hasn't arrived, Archer and Jean set off in pursuit.

En route Archer learns that Stanley Broadhurst is obsessed with researching the life of his missing father, Leo Broadhurst. And the girl in the yellow skirt, who Stanley claimed was an old schoolfriend, has been spotted driving a stolen Mercedes and is now known to be probably unstable.

The journey leads to a mountainside inferno, and the scene of a murder. Young Ronny has disappeared, and the girl's escaped on a stolen yacht with another male friend, Jerry Kilpatrick. Jerry is guiding the boat in the direction of Sausalito and the crumbling Victorian manse where his mother, the artist Ellen Storm, has lived alone ever since the disappearance of her lover Leo Broadhurst, fifteen years before. The labyrinthine weave of characters and plot keep you on your toes, but Macdonald's rich weave of characters and events make it more than worth the effort.

[bushwick]

Got one of these Lew Archer books out from a library years ago... I loved it. May have to revisit.

[Calenture]

I forgot to mention that John Ross Macdonald's real name was Kenneth Millar. He was married to Margaret Millar, who also wrote detective fiction using her own name. Some of her stories have weird undertones, Beast in View, for instance.

[stuyoung]

I've only read a few of the Archer novels and short stories. So far The Chill has been the best.

Annoyed that I missed the film adaptation of The Moving Target when it was on the telly the other day. Starring Paul Newman and with a script by William Goldman. Retitled Harper as apparently Newman had a superstition about all his recent successes starting with an h -- Hombre, Hud etc -- so Lew Archer became Lew Harper.

[andydecker]

The Chill is a good one. Macdonald is one of the writers I re-read every couple of years.

His plots are mostly rubbish, depending on unbelievable coincidences and relationships, which are far out. Even more than many of Chandler´s novels.

But they are told so well and are written so movingly that this doesn´t matter. If one wants to read one typical Archer, pick the last one The Blue Hammer.

The two movies are both very good.