Wed 1 Mar 2017
ROSS MACDONALD – The Chill. Lew Archer # 11. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1963. Paperback reprints include: Bantam F2913, 1965; Warner, July 1990; Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1996.
Ross Macdonald is considered one of the finest writers of private eye fiction of all time, and rightly so. The Chill is both tightly plotted and smoothly laid out for the reader, who sees the story through one set of eyes, those of private eye Lew Archer only. One might wish that he would convey everything he thinks to the reader, but for better or worse, he does not.
This leaves it up to the reader to interpret people and events at the same time Archer does, or decide to wait until the end, when, at least in The Chill, there is a seismic shift at work, one that once it has clicked into place, will make sudden sense out of what till then had been a huge and unmanageable set of connected coincidences. This is definitely not the case. Macdonald knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote this book, every inch of the way.
Which begins with Archer being hired by a distraught young man to find his newlywed wife, who seems to have run out on him before their marriage has even been consummated. That’s the easy part. Before locating her, no more than a simple day’s work, Archer runs across several other people who had recently come in contact with her in one way or another, including several academics, one of whom briefly toys with hiring him herself; a man who may or may not be the girl’s father; plus a large group of other miscellaneous lovers, wives and mothers, some incidental, most not, all sharply described and delineated.
One really does need a scorecard to read this densely written and populated book, as the story only escalates from there. Once found, the missing woman then comes very close to being booked for murder. Archer does not think she did it, and not wishing to give up on the case, he needs to find another client, and soon, which luckily he manages to do, and very quickly.
The case takes him geographically from a small town on the California coast to Chicago and Reno and back to Pacific Point before it is done, and chronologically back 20 years or more, with several murders having occurred along the way, some of them “solved,” but perhaps not all.
One of the themes of the book, to me, is one of Zeno’s ancient Grecian paradoxes, which as recounted by Aristotle, goes something like this:
Which in everyday language, I take to mean: “No matter how fast you go, you’ll never get there.” Sounds like pure noir to me.
March 1st, 2017 at 1:23 pm
I’ve not read all of the Lew Archer books, but this is certainly my favorite of those I have read. It’s both a private eye novel and a genuine fair play detective novel. Though the very subtle clues are right there, in plain sight so to speak, I doubt even diehard fans will be able to figure out the truly shocking finale. I love it when I can still be fooled. Never saw it coming at all.
March 1st, 2017 at 1:53 pm
I haven’t read them all, either, but I’m sure I read this one when I was a member of the Mystery Guild (?), and one of the offerings was a 3-in-1 volume of Macdonald novels. This was one of the three.
It didn’t matter. That was over 50 years ago. When I read it again this past week, I didn’t remember it at all, and the ending? It knocked my socks off, shoes with them.
March 1st, 2017 at 2:21 pm
I’ve read all the Lew Archer novels, in fact I’ve read them all twice. A few years ago I thought I’d read a couple and see if the series held up to my first reaction in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Back then I gave most of the novels my highest rating.
Well, I didn’t stop at two. In fact they all were so impressive I reread all 18 of the Lew Archer series and enjoyed them even more the second time around. This series gets my highest recommendation.
March 1st, 2017 at 2:54 pm
Over the next few years I’m going to make an effort to read them all myself, Walker, starting with the ones I’ve never read. I can’t go wrong with a plan like that!
March 1st, 2017 at 10:47 pm
I consumed the Macdonald oeuvre after reading the first, and retain my love for the books, but in retrospect I think you hit on a problem that has led to Macdonald’s fall from the third place in the triumvirate of Hammett, Chandler, and …
Macdonald replaced James M. Cain and has been replaced by Spillane, and I think the reason is Archer. He is almost an anti-character to the extent we are Archer, not knowing his thoughts because they are ours. The problem with that is Archer dissolves into a faceless voice, vaguely Ken Millar and vaguely us.
Paul Newman helped for my generation as indelible as HARPER, but younger audiences don’t know that film or its sequels (anyway you look at it TWILIGHT with Newman, Hackman, Sarandon, and Garner is a sequel to HARPER and DROWNING POOL). They might read Macdonald, but Archer is a cypher compared to the indelible creations of Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane.
March 2nd, 2017 at 12:07 am
I disagree completely with the argument that Spillane has displaced Ross Macdonald when we discuss the so called big three. I cannot imagine rereading the Spillane novels and thinking they were still great. When I first read Spillane I had problems with the Mike Hammer character because he was too hardboiled, etc. Rereading these novels now would be a task that I would not enjoy.
I looked up my notes on the Lew Archer novels and I see that in 2009 I decided to figure out if the novels stood the test of time. My intent was to reread only one or two but the novels were so excellent that I ended up rereading all 18 titles. There is no doubt in my mind that Macdonald deserves to be mentioned with Chandler and Hammett.
Spillane had a great idea with the tough, violent nature of Mike Hammer and the books were bestsellers. But they are not on the level of Chandler, Hammett, and Ross Macdonald.
March 2nd, 2017 at 12:23 am
I wouldn’t put Spillane in the top rank triumvirate of hardboiled PI writers, either. Not in terms of their writing or the stories they wrote.
But.
How many people today recognize Mickey Spillane’s name and don’t know Lew Archer at all?
How much does that count for?
March 2nd, 2017 at 12:30 am
PS. I have yet to see TWILIGHT. Shame on me.
March 2nd, 2017 at 12:45 am
Steve brings up an interesting point about how people recognize Spillane’s name but not Ross Macdonald or Lew Archer. I believe there are 3 basic reasons for this:
1–When the Mike Hammer novels were first published they received a lot of attention because of Mike Hammer’s violent character and the great ending of I THE JURY. My father died over 60 years ago but one of my memories of him is when he and a neighbor father were talking about the crazy ending. This interested me so much that I read the novel even though I was only 10 or 11. Lew Archer was a more sensitive and introspective PI and thus never had such attention. I cannot imagine Lew Archer gunning down a naked girl. I’ll have to reread the Archer novels to make sure of this!
2–The Spillane early novels were massive best sellers. Ross Macdonald was writing a literary type of novel and thus could never have such popular attention. His books sold well but not in the millions like Spillane. But we all know that such popularity does not mean a novel is great.
3–The beer ads that Mickey Spillane did on TV made him extremely popular and he came across as a nice guy with a sense of humor. Ross Macdonald of course had no exposure on TV to speak of except for the two Paul Newman movies.
March 2nd, 2017 at 3:45 am
Which Commandment says that it has to be a Big Three, anyhow?
I saw something like this on a movie site, about the Big Three Silent comedians:
Chaplin was first.
Keaton was second.
Harold Lloyd was third and paid $2.40.
But serially folk …
I also recall this quote about Macdonald:
Ross Macdonald was the Greatest American Novelist.
He had to be, to get away with writing the same novel seventeen times.
One person’s opinion, of course …
By the bye, I thought The Chill was Macdonald’s grand slam, so there too.
March 2nd, 2017 at 9:24 am
Why does there have to be three? http://mysticalnumbers.com/number-3/
Meaning of Number 3
Number 3 is the number of good fortune.Number 3
The Pythagoreans taught that the number three was the first true number.
Three is the first number that forms a geometrical figure – the triangle.
Three was considered the number of harmony, wisdom and understanding.
Past Now FutureThree is the number of time:
Past Present Future
Birth Life Death
Beginning Middle End
Three is the number of the divine.
March 2nd, 2017 at 6:42 am
There were two actors who have played Archer on TV. Peter Graves played him in TV Movie THE UNDERGROUND MAN (1974) and Brian Keith played him in a short-lived forgotten NBC TV series called ARCHER (1975).
As for including Macdonald with Hammett and Chandler as part of the top three I don’t see the relevancy today. At one time Archer may have belong with the literacy of Chandler but Archer in all ways possible no longer stands out as unique or influential today as he did in the past.
I don’t see the need to force Macdonald or Spillane into the group of Hammett and Chandler. It doesn’t change the importance of Archer and Hammer. But in the hard-boiled world there is Hammett and Chandler and no one else.
Oh, just wondering if there is a Top Three of traditional mystery authors or is it just Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?
March 2nd, 2017 at 9:29 am
That’s a good question. At one time, Erle Stanley Gardner would have been number three, with some argument as to John Dickson Carr. Neither is as well known today as Christie or Doyle, especially when it comes to books still in print, so I’m open to other suggestions, if any.
March 2nd, 2017 at 11:48 am
11:
So that’s why when Curly had the stroke, Shemp had to join the act?
And when Shemp died, Joe Besser had to come in?
OK, now I understand (?).
(I know you’re kidding, Steve, but the whole “mystical numbers” thing is really so much expired horseradish.)
(And as far as comedians go, the Top 3 thing was grossly unfair to Laurel & Hardy, so there too.)
12:
When NBC’s Archer series was announced in ’75, Brian Keith gave interviews in which he said that if the series caught on, he was going to move the production to Hawaii and have Lew Archer live on a boat.
As it happened, Keith had just relocated to Hawaii, and was himself living on a boat (what an incredible coincidence!).
And that was when serious fans decided that if they just ignored the whole thing, it would go away.
So they did, and it did.
Such is life.
March 2nd, 2017 at 1:47 pm
Spillane never replaced MacDonald because NacDonald was never #3. Ross MacDonald was a fine literary novelist who wrote private eye stories and books. The Underground Man remains a personal favorite. But if we’re talking innovators in the field of PI fiction who cast a shadow that is still with us today, well, Hammett-realism, Chandler gives us the and human interest and poetry, and Spillane gives us that manic, overheated side, kinda dumb slice of the American psyche currently most evident in out present political atmosphere. MacDonald’s “innovation?” He, like Parker, made the PI tropes relevant to a particular generation. That’s adaptability, not innovation. Vineyard is exactly right, and later for this “I re-read ’em all so I know I’m right” bunk. I’ve re-read all of Spillane too many times to count…along with Hammett and Chandler. But MacDonald? A gifted one trick pony who mined the vein opened by Chandler in The Long Goodbye and is forgotten by all but genre devotees with reason.
March 2nd, 2017 at 2:10 pm
Ouch. I’m still in with the Macdonald crowd, but that last sentence comes closer to the truth than I’ll ever admit.
March 2nd, 2017 at 2:21 pm
Ross Macdonald as a “…one trick pony…”? I don’t see that at all. Just like I think there is no way that Spillane is #3. I guess there is no way to resolve this question since we are so far apart.
March 2nd, 2017 at 3:22 pm
Spillane was extremely popular, and his name is still recognizable today, thanks to the reasons that Walker outlined a while back. There’s also no doubt that he brought a new and different vitality to the PI novel. But to put him on a par as a writer with Hammett and Chandler, frankly I just can’t do it, for the same reasons I’d say no to anyone suggesting that Carroll John Daly and Race Williams should be #3. This seems like something silly to say, I have to admit, but innovation, popularity, influence and readability just aren’t enough for me!
Other that that, of course, it’s all a matter of taste.
March 2nd, 2017 at 4:38 pm
In comment #18 Steve questions the logic of saying that Carroll John Daly and Race Williams should be number 3, behind Chandler and Hammett.
I also have problems with such a claim but if you google IN DEFENSE OF CARROLL JOHN DALY you will read Stephen Mertz making such a claim by saying that Daly runs neck and neck with Hammett, etc.
The article is a reprint from MYSTERY FANCIER in 1978 or 1979.
March 2nd, 2017 at 5:19 pm
Here’s the link:
http://www.blackmaskmagazine.com/carroldaly.html
Stephen, I don’t think anyone could present the case for Daly any better than you.
March 2nd, 2017 at 8:28 pm
Stephen, your defense of Daly is impressive but it assumes things I don’t think true. I don’t think he has had as great of influence on writers as you assume. Yes, I can see Spillane and early Hammett – the stories he hated later on.
You mentioned Hammett’s novels, except you left out THE THIN MAN. Hammett’s range from hardboiled masterpiece RED HARVEST (a book highly regarded by most literary critics today) to the humor of THE THIN MAN. Where Hammett is remembered today is by his characters, especially Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles. It is that range where he leaves Daly in the dust.
Daly was a one note writer as his work never escaped the pulp world of the hardboiled detective. Daly may have been first but Hammett’s characters proved a success beyond the mystery reader. Hammett’s Sam Spade and the Charles are icons much due to the success those characters had in films and other media.
No matter how good Daly may be (I need to read him again because in the past I didn’t like his prose or character), Hammett and Chandler define the hardboiled detective for the masses, even those people who have never read a mystery.
There is no one else that come close in the hardboiled genre to representing the style of mystery in the public eye than Hammett and Chandler.
In comedy there is a rule of three. You mention a list, the first is serious, the next is serious and matches the first in subject, and the three is a gag or non sequitur. That is how I see the Top Three of hardboiled detectives – Hammett, Chandler, and you have to be joking.
March 2nd, 2017 at 10:17 pm
I never suggested Spillane was the equal of Hammett, Chandler, or Macdonald, but I hold that if you are discussing the hard boiled school today the big three names are Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane.
When I first entered the field as a reader the third man was James M. Cain. By the late seventies into the eighties Ross Macdonald nudged Cain out of the way, but for what ever reason Macdonald has been sidelined and Spillane has filled that space.
I have a theory why and it doesn’t have to do with literary skill, as much as voice. Imitated as they may be no other writer sounds like Hammett or Chandler, and like it or not Spillane. I’ve read writers doing a Cain style novel as well as Cain. They weren’t first, but some were better writers. There is a whole Macdonald school which is imitating Macdonald following Chandler.
But Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane are unique. They can be copied and imitated, but never really captured.
I still love Macdonald, but it doesn’t blind me to the sad fact his work has been sidelined, as a gifted academic imitator of Chandler.
And one other thing. Whatever else Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane were unique. They had influences, but what they did with them was new. Macdonald told new stories, but fine as his prose is it is still not a unique voice. It is, in fact, an inauthentic voice, an academic voice, where Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane are all the genuine article.
March 3rd, 2017 at 12:19 am
David, I might have agreed with you about Spillane during the last half of the 20th Century but not today. There is a culture war that has been going on for most of the 21st Century. While half of the country wants to return to the White America of the 50s where Spillane fits, the other half is the diversity crowd that finds Spillane offensive.
While Mike Hammer never offended me, I have never been a fan. I see him too close to the level of the pulp paperbacks of the 50s to see him as unique.
March 3rd, 2017 at 12:37 am
I hadn’t read that Daly defense in decades but am encouraged by the fact that I was so right way back then. Yes, Ross was a one trick pony. A crime buried in the past, lots of familial dysfunction and too many similes. But he was damn good at it. But why are my comments on Daly so misunderstood? Hey, I’m enthusiastic but I recognize that Hammett and Chandler were a wee bit better as writers than Carroll John Daly, who never rose above low grade blood and thunder…though he was quite good at it. But if we go back to the very start of the PI genre, Chandler flows out of Daly more than he, Chandler, probably ever realized himself. There’s little poetry in Hammett. It’s ddiamond hard prose, sparse, terse, grounded in realism. There were and are men like the Op. Hammett was brutal reality. Chandler is a world of tough guy make believe. Chandler’s world is imaginary. Cops and criminals don’t talk like his characters. Slinky dames don’t lounge around every mansion. Marlowe is a wonderful character but Chandler has to work to make him believable. The point I made about Daly was not that he was as good a writer as Hammett or Chandler, but that Daly’s influence extended beyond Hammett’s, Daly’s most accomplished acolyte being Mickey Spillane, who, yes, raised Daly’s hokum to the level of Hammett and Chandler for the reasons David Vineyard states.
March 3rd, 2017 at 2:16 am
David, Stephen and all the rest. Maybe what makes it so fun to have a number three is it give us someone to argue about. Because I doubt there is anyone who would disagree that Hammett and Chandler are the top two.
March 3rd, 2017 at 7:35 am
Yes, I agree that Hammett and Chandler are the top two but I’ve seen big arguments about who is better, Hammett or Chandler! I vote for Chandler…
March 3rd, 2017 at 11:53 am
I’d like to thank everyone who has taken part in this conversation. Everyone has expressed themselves well, and I appreciate your taking the time to take part.
I hope I can correctly summarize the discussion this way. We have been talking about the top three hardboiled PI writers without ever quite establishing the criterion.
If we are talking about writing ability, then the top three would most likely be Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald (in chronological order).
If we are listing the top three in terms of popularity, innovation and influence, based on a present day perspective, then they would be Hammett, Chandler and Spillane, with a nod to Carroll John Daly.
As to who of the top two is better, Hammett or Chandler, speaking for myself, it would be the one I happen to be reading at the time.
March 3rd, 2017 at 12:04 pm
Walker, I am a Hammett man for the Continental Op and the range of characters and writing style (hardbroiled to comedy) versus Chandler’s wonderful prose but limited plot – PI is hired to protect secret of rich family and ends up revealing it and destroying the family. Chandler is a strong two for THE BIG SLEEP alone (though I preferred the film).
March 3rd, 2017 at 12:15 pm
Walker and any Edgar Rice Burroughs fans. There is a new comic out called GREATEST ADVENTURE and will feature all the characters of the ERB universe. Below you will find an interview with the writer who loves the original and hates the films. Its off topic in this thread but I thought of you Walker when I read the article.
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/02/28/bill-willingham-edgar-rice-burroughs-greatest-adventure/
March 3rd, 2017 at 12:27 pm
Steve, if you base it on sales James Paterson would be in the conversation. You can see how old we all are when there is no mention of a writer who started writing after the 1950s. Has the hardboiled detective become that out dated that there has been no new talent worthy of mention in the last 60 plus years?
March 3rd, 2017 at 6:00 pm
I don’t think of Patterson as either a PI or a hard-boiled writer, otherwise your point is well taken. I’d thought of bringing newer writers up myself, but I have been distracted this week more than usual.
While I don’t know for sure, I suspect that the median age of those who leave comments here is 70. Half older, half younger. Whatever it is, it’s higher than rest of the population, that’s for sure.
But if not Patterson, who then? I’d suggest Robert B. Parker as being very popular and (as some have said) having brought new life into the PI field. Others gave up on him long before he died, but I think he’s worth putting out there.
Robert Crais? Follows too closely in Parker’s footsteps, it seems to me.
Michael Connelly and the Bosch books, as well as others? Nearly 40 in all to this point, but a review of his second book by Barry Gardner currently posted has garnered not a single comment.
March 3rd, 2017 at 8:00 pm
To me Hammett and Chandler are the top two hardboiled mystery writers. Their characters occupation does not matter. There are hardboiled cops, reporters, lawyers, etc.
Patterson was a terrible example but I just tossed him out because I was too lazy to think of a better one.
If you are limiting this to PIs there is a good reason for no great hardboiled PI writers in 60s years, the PI has been replaced by the cops such as Connelly’s Bosch.
Thomas Perry is my first thought with BUTCHER BOY series and METZGER’S DOG. He has Jane Whitefield for PI. But he lacks the iconic characters Hammett and Chandler have.
March 4th, 2017 at 11:44 pm
There is another element here we have to acknowledge, and that is film and television, and to a lesser extent radio drama. There Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane excel.
And in Spillane’s case he survived his critics, kept writing, remained a celebrity as writer, and after death has Max Allan Collins continuing his unfinished work.
Few of the Macdonald followers are still writing, there are only two films, a television movie, and a little seen series. He died fairly young, and while he is a better mystery writer than Chandler, he can’t escape the imitative claim.
I agree about Daly, who for all his flaws, is the true progenitor of the genre, and in terms of magazine sales likely out performed Hammett and Chandler. Where he failed was in going beyond his pup work and winning a mainstream audience, likely because the talent wasn’t there. Still, you can hear his voice in the genre even today.
As for the big two the differences between Hammett and Chandler are so broad as to make comparisons difficult. Hammett is a more deceptive writer in that his broad romantic streak is hidden behind brutally honest prose. It’s only in his subject matter where you find South Seas romance, Templar treasure, Western themes, Revolutions, and other pulp staples.
Chandler is much less covert in his romanticism. Cynical as he sounds Marlowe is Galahad in Don Quixote’s make believe armor, his adventures a long picaresque of life in LA and Hollywood. His oft criticised plots are in reality the loose quest shape of the picaresque novel where the protagonist is exposed to series of increasingly bizarre incidents and characters all the while maintaining an invincible innocence that denies the brutality of the world. It’s a style of storytelling used from Cervantes to Voltaire, from Milton Caniff to Hugo Pratt in comics. Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and Geoffrey Household all applied it to the thriller as did John Buchan.
March 5th, 2017 at 2:01 am
After I had gone through practically all the books in the Lew Archer series, at least twice, I used to always leave one in my backpack. Just in case I’d be held over somewhere, and I had forgotten to bring any of the books I was reading at the time. I felt that I could just open any of the Archer books, anywhere and it would still be an interesting read, even if I’d read the book before and I probably wasn’t going to finish it.
I think your quote at the end should actually read like what the Red Queen told Alice, in “Through the Looking Glass”, ” You’ll have to run much faster than this, just to stay where you are.”
March 5th, 2017 at 2:34 am
There are certainly devoted readers to MacDonald, Spillane, and Daly. But there are devoted readers to countless other writers as well. My writer that I read and reread is Ross Thomas. But he doesn’t deserve to be mentioned with Hammett and Chandler in regards to most important writers of hardboiled fiction. Neither does anyone else.
One of the reasons I maintain there is only Hammett and Chandler then there is the rest is the length of Hammett and Chandler’s stay at the top.
The third pick always seems forced to make a “Holy trilogy.” Examine the writers by decade, how has the public thought of them changed, how has the critics thought of them changed. Name any character or writer with the staying power of Hammett and Chandler, any other work that would appeal to the two warring social cultures of today. I am sure Spillane would have appeal to those looking to “make America great again” and equally sure he would not be welcomed in today’s Woman’s movement and the left (my side). Yet Hammett and Chandler still have the mainstream appeal of all sides.
Hammett and Chandler are still remembered fondly. They are still admired nearly universally by readers and critics alike. Some writers remain reader darlings and some are critics darlings but no one else in hardboiled fiction is truly enjoyed by all than Hammett and Chandler.