Tue 19 Sep 2017
An Archived PI Mystery Review: ROSS MACDONALD – Black Money.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
ROSS MACDONALD – Black Money. Lew Archer #14. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1966. Reprinted many times, including: Bantam F3320, paperback, 1967. Warner, paperback, August 1990. Contained in Ross Macdonald: Four Late Novels (The Library of America, hardcover, 2017).
It’s good to see Lew Archer back in print [as of 1990]. There were quite a few of his books that I never read when they first came out, although I think I have them all, mostly in book club editions. Given the opportunity to catch up on them now [that Warner has begun reprinting them], I realize I’d forgotten how little of Archer himself gets into these books, with no real information on his life at all, or even his personal thoughts.
He’s hired here to investigate the new man in Ginny Fallon’s life, with his client the rich young man who always thought he’d marry her, but who now sees her being stolen away by a phony Frenchman (he thinks) with the savoir faire he never had, and never will. Ginny’s father was a suicide victim seven years before, and of course it’s connected.
The other thing I’d also forgotten is Macdonald’s overwhelming reliance on similes, metaphors and other literary comparisons to describe almost everything. It’s not done here to the point of self-parody yet, but it seems awfully close at times. As for the mystery itself, it is (as always) chilling, deep and complex. Macdonald does not rely on coincidence as a plot device, and the roots of the crimes in this book are (as always) twisted and embedded far back into the past.
FOOTNOTE: Some of Macdonald’s similes work really well, some don’t. One that didn’t, at least for me, comes from page 8: “The white and purple flowers on the brush gave out a smell like the slow breath of sunlight.” It sounds great, but what does it mean? On the other hand, here’s a quote from page 178 which might serve as Archer’s family motto: “Never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.” (This one I like.)
September 19th, 2017 at 3:53 pm
I still have the first edition hardcover of BLACK MONEY which I read in 1966. I gave it a great rating and noted:
“Excellent plotting and the characters are all finely drawn and participants in their private hells. Most of them corrupt or unhappy because of some past action that constantly haunts them in the present.”
Then I reread it in 2009 and commented: “…another great Lew Archer noir mystery. Usual theme that Macdonald was so good at–corrupting influence of money and sex, especially from the past.”
Even though I have all 18 of the Lew Archer series already, I bought the recently published three volumes of The Library of America set, which reprints 11 of the 18 novels in the series.
One of my favorite hardboiled crime noir series. If you google NEW REPUBLIC Ross Macdonald, you will get a link to a rave review of his work in the October 2017 issue.
September 19th, 2017 at 6:37 pm
Here’s the link to the NEW REPUBLIC article:
https://newrepublic.com/article/144537/ross-macdonald-true-detective-noir-novelist-investigated-sources-rot-american-grain
I did not know the magazine is still in business, but it is. I read the article first at Barnes & Noble a couple of hours ago. It’s a good article, too. Thanks, Walker, for spotting it!
September 19th, 2017 at 5:46 pm
I admire MacDonald immensely, but his wife, Margaret Millar, was an even better and more varied writer.
September 19th, 2017 at 6:38 pm
I agree with you, Roger, 100%, but for some reason, given a choice, I’d read Macdonald every time, rather than Millar, even one I haven’t read before.
September 19th, 2017 at 10:38 pm
Macdonald is a writer I will always read, and this one of his best books, but Steve does point out some of the problems I have with him and with Archer including the too academic simile or metaphor.
His plots tend to blur together, too many lost fathers and family tragedies, and Archer is a deliberate cypher leading us with no real guide through his Southern California Hell, just a disembodied voice.
I’m not surprised Macdonald has all the literary academic support he always had. His is an academic take on the rough and wooly world of the pulp private eye, and important voice, but I think one flawed to the extent he achieved a certain level mid career and never really exceeded it (true of many writers).
I read the NEW REPUBLIC article and I find the comparison to Le Carre telling, another writer beloved of critics and academics, but because his voice is academic and not really a portrait of the actual people he writes about.
Marlowe was a romantic ideal that didn’t exist, but bits and pieces of him were real enough. There’s only a flicker of a heartbeat to Archer, an anemic amount of blood, and little of that a picture of a real detective.
I enjoyed most of Macdonald’s books, but only a handful left me satisfied the same way Hammett or Chandler do. There WS something missing, and for me it was Archer
September 20th, 2017 at 5:11 am
I think David Vineyard explains why Macdonald is more popular than Millar. Macdonald isn’t cosy, but he veers away from the bleakness inherent in his stories and Archer – like Marlowe in Chandler’s books and Smiley in Le Carré’s – offers the illusion that “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid”. That isn’t true, but we feel better for it.
Auden pointed out that the detective story is a restoration of order and the same is true of its variant, the mystery story. Millar’s best books are crime stories and there’s often no resolution to them.
September 22nd, 2017 at 10:00 am
“Macdonald”‘s aphorism is a less sexist (or limited) recasting of Nelson Algren’s warning (as I recall it): “Never sleep with a woman whose problems are worse than yours.”
September 22nd, 2017 at 10:40 am
Hmm. That’s from A Walk on the Wild Side, as one of Algren’s “three rules of life”: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”