The Underground Man: Ross Macdonald (1971)

“Isn’t there always a blond girl?”

Ross Macdonald’s The Underground Man, is set against a wildfire, but the book begins with a deceptive sense of peace. It’s supposed to be Archer’s day off; he is minding his own business, feeding peanuts to Jays outside of his apartment. A sweet little boy named Ronny Broadhurst peaks his head outside from a neighbouring apartment and starts chatting to Archer. A few minutes later, Ronny’s very uptight, ill-tempered father, Stan shows up and words are exchanged between Stan and his wife Jean who is staying, temporarily, in an apartment near Archer’s. It’s obvious from the ugly scene between Stan and Jean that they are separated and on the brink of a divorce. Stan, on the verge of violence, accuses Archer of being his wife’s new “playmate,” and leaves with his son. Jean later tells Archer that Stan is on his way to visit his wealthy mother in Santa Theresa and according to the news, due to a wildfire, there’s an evacuation order in place for that region. Archer establishes that Stan’s mother hasn’t seen her son, so he is on the case to locate the boy.

It’s a peculiar situation. Jean explains that Stan is obsessed with finding his father, a Saint Theresa lothario who disappeared with another woman years ago. Stanley’s mother was left high and dry and since her husband’s disappearance, there has been no word. Stanley’s obsession with finding his father has, according to Jean, ruined their marriage. The night before Jean left the family home with Ronny, Stan brought home a young blonde girl, a “hysteric” in Jean’s opinion, but the girl had a “wild story” that seemed to “fascinate[d]” Stanley.

The Underground Man starts with a toxic marriage and a boy who’s disappeared but soon Archer realises he’s in the middle of a very complex case. Under threat of a hungry wildfire, Archer searches the region for Ronny, but he must wade through years of secrets and several toxic relationships first: a few rocky marriages and a very unhealthy mother-son dynamic. The wildfire makes an unusual and interesting backdrop to murder and blackmail, and the descriptions tell me that Ross Macdonald lived through a California wildfire. The Forest service fire crews are out in the more remote areas protecting the houses of the wealthy while the lower end residential areas are “almost depopulated” with “a few men [were] up on their roofs with running hoses and defiant expressions.”

I got up and looked around me. Under the stratum of smoke which lay over the city, the air was harshly clear. The low sun was like a spinning yellow frisbee which I could almost reach out and catch.

This is the 16th book in the Lew Archer series.

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Black Money: Ross Macdonald (1966)

“I didn’t like the purposeful look in her eye, and I began to regret the bottle of pink champagne. She took it from my hands as if she planned to break it over the prow of an affair.”

Black Money is the 13th book in Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer series. This tale brings the private detective to a tennis club in the upscale Southern California college town of Montevista, where he’s employed by Peter Jamieson, the bulimic son of a local wealthy man. Jamieson hires Archer to ‘save’ his ex-fiancée, Virginia Fablon. Virginia, after jilting Peter, has taken up with the charismatic Francis Martell. On the surface Virginia’s decision to dump Peter in favor of Martell doesn’t seem so odd. Virginia is a lover of all things French, and Martell is educated, handsome and sophisticated–unlike Peter who spends most of the time stuffing himself:

He looked like money about three generations removed from its source. Though he couldn’t have been out of his early twenties, his face was puffy and apologetic, the face of a middle-aged boy. Under his carefully tailored Ivy League suit, he wore a layer of fat like easily penetrable armor.

Martell is a man of mystery; he claims to be both wealthy and in hiding from De Gaulle. Peter doesn’t buy the story, and so Archer begins digging for the truth. It seems that Martell recently arrived in town with a Bentley and a 6 figure deposit made from a Panamanian bank. His references used to get into the local tennis club are suspect. Martell also becomes positively violent at the idea that someone might take his photograph. Archer suspects that Martell isn’t the French aristocrat he claims to be, and soon Archer connects Martell to the suicide (supposedly) of Virginia’s father years before.

In the course of his investigation, Archer meets a widow with secrets, a doctor with a secret vice, an over-worked French professor, and his frisky much younger discontented wife who is looking for a way out of her kitchen-life:

Though she had a strokeable looking back, my hands were careful not to wander. The easy ones were nearly always trouble: frigid or nympho, scitzy or commercial or alcoholic, sometimes all 5 at once. Their nicely wrapped gifts of themselves often turned out to be homemade bombs or fudge with arsenic in it.

When the novel began, I initially thought it lacked the punch of many of the other titles I have read so far, but as the book continued, the plot grew on me. Ultimately, Black Money is my favorite in the series so far. It shows a more mature Archer. Cynical yes, but a touch of humor to his barbed observations as he roots through this snobbish college town where claiming to be a Frenchman apparently opens all doors. The emotional layers of the story are poignant, and the crimes–in terms of moral responsibility–are complex.

A few years ago, there was talk of the Coen bros. making a film of Black Money, but so far that hasn’t happened. And that’s a shame.

She was rough. They get that way sometimes when they marry too young and trap themselves in a kitchen, wake up in a kitchen and wake up ten years later wondering where the world is.

 

 

The Far Side of the Dollar: Ross Macdonald

In The Far Side of the Dollar, the 12th novel in the Lew Archer series, Archer is called to Laguna Perdida, a pricey, drab reform school, by Dr Sponti. Sponti hires Archer to find a runaway, Tom Hillman, a teen who was recently sent to the school by his affluent parents. Sponti, hoping to squash any scandal, wants the boy found, but the plot thickens when Archer learns that the Hillmans have received a demand for $25,000 for Tom’s safe return. The Hillmans aren’t the easiest people to deal with, and Archer senses that there is more to the story than he is being told. He’s particularly interested in the reason why the Hillmans sent Tom to the reform school. Archer, looking for answers, follows the trail back into the past, and along the way he runs into some very different families: all of them unhappy (in their own way as Tolstoy notes).

Tom appears to be a kidnap victim in the hands of an opportunistic couple: Carol and a tough guy named Harley. Archer tracks the shady couple to a run-down motel: Dack’s Auto Court, and there he finds Carol beaten to death….

The Far Side of the Dollar is not as cynical as many of the other novels in the series. There’s an undercurrent of lost boys and broken families. Some of the boys at Laguna Perdida are initially hostile to Archer’s questions but then one teen asks the detective, poignantly, if he is a father. Archer finds himself offering fatherly advice to Tom’s teenage neighbour, Stella, a wonderful young girl who promises to grow into a wonderful woman, and there are several times he recommends professional help for families and marriages in trouble. There are many broken families here: one family broken by a religious nutcase who believes in beating his children until they come to their senses, one marriage broken by infidelity, and another broken by a man’s longing for a son.

The novel is not as cynical and world-weary as its predecessors, but Archer is seen very much as an outsider as usual. This time he’s an outsider without a wife and children–which may be a good thing considering all the versions of broken families he sees in this book. Also a love interest is introduced, so there’s a note of optimism in spite of the body count and the wretched families. It’s written with Macdonald’s terrific, yet seemingly simple sense of atmosphere and description:

It was August, and it shouldn’t have been raining. Perhaps rain was to strong a word for the drizzle that blurred the landscape and kept my windshield wipers going. I was driving south, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.

The Chill: Ross Macdonald (1964)

“People who don’t believe in divorce sometimes believe in murder.”

In Ross MacDonald’s The Chill, PI Lew Archer is hired by newlywed, Alex to find his missing bride. Alex and Dolly were on their honeymoon at the Surf House when she was visited by an older, bearded man. After that meeting Dolly disappeared. Archer takes the case and begins digging into the identity of the mystery visitor and Dolly’s past.

According to Alex, Dolly had no family, but Archer discovers that that isn’t true; Dolly’s mother was murdered and her father went to prison for the crime. It doesn’t take much digging for Archer to find Dolly’s mystery visitor: Dolly’s father, fresh out of prison for killing Dolly’s mother. It’s not too surprising that Dolly’s father sought his daughter as it was Dolly’s testimony, as a child, that put him behind bars. Why did she disappear? Is she frightened of her father?

While Archer may have found Dolly’s father, he has yet to find Dolly. His search takes him to the college campus where Dolly enrolled as a student. Vampish Professor Helen Haggerty, Dolly’s academic counselor, invites Archer home for a drink and then begs him to protect her from the mysterious threats she has received. …

The Chill takes Archer back over 20 years and several murders which seem to be inexplicably linked. As the body count rises, Archer runs into an interesting cast of characters: the ex-detective twisted by grief and guilt, the rigid society widow who is happy to bury the truth, and the college dean who doesn’t take a step without mummy’s approval. While I did not guess the solution, when it arrived, it was implausible. Interesting but still implausible. Macdonald’s novels twist on the sordid complications of broken family, and that is true here. When Archer closes his cases, he probably swears he will remain single. Not the best in the series; this is number 11.

The Doomsters: Ross Macdonald (1958) Lew Archer 7

“You don’t play footsie with a homicidal psycho, Mister.”

In Ross Macdonald’s gritty PI novel, The Doomsters, PI Lew Archer opens his front door late one night only to become embroiled in a tangled web of murder, deceit and toxic family relationships. Carl Hallman knocks at Archer’s door after escaping from a mental institution. Carl, who is irrational and raving, has a story to tell: sent there by fellow escapee Tom Rica, a heroin addict from Archer’s past, Carl claims that he’s been locked up by the family’s crooked doctor on orders from Carl’s older brother, Jerry. There’s a large inheritance at stake: the family’s orange orchards. Archer agrees to help on the condition that Carl return to the mental institution. Carl agrees, but on the way back, he overpowers Archer and steals his car. Archer, trying to track his car, and Carl, ends up on the Hallman estate along with Carl’s patient, long-suffering wife, Mildred. According to Mildred, the Hallman household is toxic:

A building can soak up emotions, you know, so that after a while it has the same emotions as the people who live in it. They’re in the cracks in the walls, the smokestains on the ceiling, the smells in the kitchen.

Mildred, who currently takes care of her boozy mother, says she was glad to leave the Hallman ranch. She claims that Carl’s incarceration at the mental institution is about Jerry controlling the money. Everyone on the Hallman estate, hearing of Carl’s escape, is on edge. Jerry Hallman returns home only to be murdered a few minutes later. Carl is the prime suspect, but he can’t be found. Archer has his doubts that Carl is the killer; it just all seems a little too convenient. And then again, Dr Grantland, the man who helped Jerry lock up Carl, seems to have a cozy bedside manner with Jerry’s wife, err.. make that widow. Add to the mix, a violent sheriff, and the body count rises–and then there’s the murky question of Carl’s parents’ deaths. …

The Doomsters, as its title suggests, is a novel that festers with people headed for doom. In this world of toxic relationships, many of the characters seal their own fate due to their choices or actions. Macdonald creates a number of fascinating women here: Miss Parrish, who seems so perfect and proper, works at the mental institution. A zealot, she has various theories about Carl’s breakdown, and she voices those theories with no small amount of snobbery. Mildred, Carl’s wife seems weighed down by responsibility and bad luck, and Zinnie, Jerry’s widow sizzles when a man casts his eyes her way.

A nice machine, I thought: pseudo Hollywood, probably empty, certainly expensive, and not new; but a nice machine.

A little of Archer’s past is revealed along with regret at the loss of his wife. He observes Zinnie, Mildred and Miss Parrish, noting that their affections are for others:

She sat down on the piano stool and took out a cigarette, which I lit for her. Twin lights burned deep in her eyes. I could sense her emotions burning behind her professional front, like walled atomic fires. They didn’t burn for me, though.

He seems to be just at the boundary of accepting that he’s too damaged to sustain a relationship with a woman. He’s not quite reached that cynical point of no return:

Try listening to yourself sometime, alone in a transient room in a strange town. The worst is when you draw a blank, and the ash-blonde ghosts of your past carry on long twittering long-distance calls with your inner ear, and there’s no way to hang up.

Lew Archer novels paint twisted images of family life, and this one is no exception. The ending is one long confession, and yet that detailed confession, a few pages later, is seeded with doubt. The entire experience leaves Archer hollow as he notes that people from the past “wait for you in time,” to “ambush” us in our memories

The Pink Hotel: Liska Jacobs

In The Pink Hotel, from Liska Jacobs, newlyweds Kit and Keith Collins arrive for their honeymoon at a prestigious Beverly Hills resort. Keith is the general manager for a mediocre “quaint roadside hotel” in Boonville, a small Northern California town, and Kit is a waitress at the hotel’s restaurant. As a couple, they’ve been together for 5 years, and Kit, fully absorbed into her husband’s career and ambitions is about to embark on a sommelier course. It’s through the hotel restaurant that Keith met the Beaumonts. Mr Beaumont ascertains that Keith intends to take his honeymoon in Napa, and degrading that suggestion, instead proposes they come to the hotel he manages in Beverley Hills. And so the Kit and Keith are at the Pink Hotel; Kit, awed by the ostentatiousness and outrageous prices, thinks this is their honeymoon, and the start of their new life together, but Keith has another agenda; he’s hoping for a job under Beaumont’s tutelage.

It doesn’t take long to see that Kit and Keith are out of their depth, but they don’t seem to realise it. Mr Beaumont has an arrangement with an employee, Coco, and Mrs. Beaumont seems to think she will have a similar arrangement with Keith. As Kit and Keith sink into the opulent lifestyle and let their decadent, new friends pick up the tab, the process of corruption takes place. The idea of a honeymoon recedes farther into the background with morality somewhere in the rear view mirror. Meanwhile, fires are breaking out all over the region and smoke fills the air. The guests sport fancy masks “fashionable with beading or sequins” and the staff have flimsy blue paper masks but some of the guests object to this. Apparently they spoil the ambience. As the fires rage, social unrest builds outside of the hotel grounds.

The novel is at its strongest depicting the almost-desperate desire to belong–to hang onto the ephemeral, temperamental whimsies of the rich. Kit’s caution over the menu prices and Keith’s insistence that the prices don’t matter (while he swallows hard) feel all too real. It’s a once in a lifetime getaway that they will be paying for for years. The desire of the have-nots to mingle with the Mega-Haves is painful. However, the social unrest outside of the hotel and the egregious petty, callous behaviour of the rich, placed the novel into an allegory zone–think Bunuel but updated to modern Beverly Hills. So we have the rich, served by the poor in a lavish enclave. Wildfires rage outside these walls, so the poor and disenfranchised suffer first, but ultimately Climate Change impacts everyone. These parts didn’t work so well for me, and seemed overdone. Even the name Boonville seems trite. I’m not overly fond of allegory (The Pilgrim’s Progress is an exception), and the novel is painfully slow at some points.

Review copy.

The Wycherly Woman: Ross Macdonald (Lew Archer #9)

“I glanced up at her small tense face. She looked like a bunny after a hard Easter.”

In The Wycherly Woman, PI Lew Archer becomes embroiled in the ashes of an acrimonious divorce in pursuit of a missing daughter. Archer is summoned to the home of the obnoxious bombastic Homer Wycherly, a wealthy man who has just returned from a cruise only to find that his only child, Phoebe, has been missing since the day he sailed. Homer Wycherly hires Archer to find Phoebe with the odd admonition that Archer not, under any circumstances, contact his ex-wife Catherine, a woman with, according to Homer, a “vile tongue.”

Just a little digging and Archer discovers that Phoebe was last seen in the company of her mother. Phoebe came aboard her father’s cruise ship to say “Bon Voyage,” but the moment was ruined by Catherine Wycherly who came aboard the ship before it sailed and created a scene with Homer. She demanded money. Two months have passed and during that time, Phoebe has not been seen at Boulder Beach College, at her rooming house, or by her momma’s boy boyfriend, Bobby. Bobby’s acidic mother is, or was, also Phoebe’s landlady. Archer is sure that Bobby knows more than he’s saying, and it’s clear that there’s no love lost between Bobby’s mother and Phoebe.

Although Archer is told by Wycherly to steer of Catherine, after he learns that Phoebe left the ship with her mother, he has little choice but to talk to Catherine. One missing person case quickly becomes a case of two missing persons. Catherine, a full-bodied, loud-mouthed blonde long past her sell-by-date, has also disappeared. Her residence, bought with money from the divorce, is up for sale, and when Archer starts asking questions regarding the real estate agent involved, the body count rises.

Archer encounters a lot of lonely, lost women on his way to solving the mystery:

You’re a hard man, aren’t you? But I like you, I really do. Are you married?

No.

I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know where to go.

She leaned towards me with a lost expression, hoping to be found.

For most of the book, I thought The Wycherly Woman could end up being at the top of my Archer list. I liked the book’s structure, and the elusive glimpses Macdonald gives the reader of Phoebe, a troubled girl who never recovered from her parent’s nasty divorce. I didn’t come close to unraveling the mystery, and the toxic stench from Homer and his relatives kept me guessing. On the down side, the plot twist was hard to swallow. Can’t say more than that without giving too much away.

High Priest of California: Charles Willeford (1953)

“By nine am the next morning, the sun decide to burn its way through the clouds and let San Francisco take a look at it.”

Used Car salesmen are apparently the High Priest[s] of California, or at least that’s the idea in Charles Willeford’s dark noir novel. The High Priest in this case is San-Francisco based Russell Haxby, a sleazy predator who looks for easy sex and easy marks. And in this world, there’s no shortage of either. Haxby is a strange character. He appears to be-laid back and easy going, but erase that image and think instead of a predator who takes his sweet time tenderizing his prey, and that’s closer to Haxby’s real nature.

The novel opens with a bored Haxby out on the prowl at a dance hall “where men come to pick up something and women come to be picked up.” At first, there seem to be no likely prospects, but he spies an attractive shapely woman in a red suit and asks her to dance. One thing leads to another, and Haxby takes the woman, Alyce, for dinner and drinks. He “pumps” her about her living situation, and after discovering that she lives with an older, female cousin, Ruthie, Haxby thinks this will be a “cinch.” Once inside her apartment, Haxby is repelled. The place smells like a “zoo,” or more precisely of cat, several tomcats, which Alyce subsequently introduces to Haxby. Haxby decides that Alyce is “too weird” for him, but partly because he’s bored and partly because he doesn’t have any other better prospects, Haxby relentlessly, gradually, dissolves Alyce’s resistance to any form of intimate, physical contact. She’s a “new type,” for Haxby. In time, Haxby learns Alyce’s big secret which explains her reluctance to have any sort of relationship, and her apparent abhorrence of sex. But her indifference to sex and fundamental naivete merely eggs Haxby on.

Given that this is written by Charles Willeford, I expected murder around the corner. Haxby is a violent man who vents his pent-up frustrations, sexual and otherwise, on lowly males who won’t put up a defense. At the same time, he listens to classical music to soothe the beast within, and reads James Joyce. Willeford skillfully describes a sleazy world which is ruled by the meanest, unscrupulous people who prey on the weak. Haxby is a predator, circling Alyce until her scruples simply wear down. At one point, he considers unzipping her housecoat but decides it would be “too easy.” Part of the fun for Haxby is seducing Alyce with murmurs of love everlasting, and watching her swallow his spiel.

We see Haxby on the car lot, flipping prices on various heaps, and waiting for returning servicemen with deep pockets to buy without too many questions. Alyce’s cousin, Ruthie, an older blowsy woman, is seeing a married man who is waiting for his invalid wife to die. He’s not much of a prize, but Ruthie has put the time in to the relationship and expects the pay off soon. There’s no room for tenderness. Innocence… well that’s a sign of weakness.

Women don’t eat much, foolish, foolish. I believe a person should take advantage of anything that gives them pleasure. When you figure that this rock we’re living on is spinning around once a day, every day, 365 spins a year, and with each day you get a day older. What the hell does an extra inch or two around the waistline mean? An extra inch or two, period.

The Barbarous Coast: Ross Macdonald (Lew Archer 6) 1956

“Jerkiness isn’t as respectable as it used to be, even in LA. which is why they had to build Vegas.”

In Ross Macdonald’s The Barbarous Coast, Lew Archer tangles with organized crime and decadent Hollywood. Archer is called to the exclusive Channel Club on Malibu Beach by nervous middle-aged club manager, Clarence Bassett. Bassett is being threatened by George Wall, a young married man, who is looking for his missing wife, Hester and claims that Bassett knows where she is.

Before Archer even meets Bassett, he runs into George Wall trying to crash the club in a desperate attempt to talk to Bassett who refuses to see the very upset husband. Archer also meets Tony Torres, ex-fighter and now the gateman at the Channel Club.

The job to protect Bassett turns into a job to find Hester–after all the two things are connected. Hester was part of a diving show, and at one point dove with Gabrielle Torres (daughter of Tony) and her cousin Manuel. Gabrielle was murdered a year ago–found shot dead on the beach, and Manuel, once a boxer too, is now banned from the profession and has served a jail sentence. Life seems to be looking up for Manuel; he’s now an actor calling himself Lance and works for a gangster named Carl Stern. Tony Torres used to be close to his nephew and now has nothing to do with him. According to Tony:

A boy gets ants in his pants, you can’t hire no exterminator for that.

Archer’s investigations are often circular, and this one is no exception. Archer senses that Gabrielle’s unsolved murder is connected to Hester’s disappearance, and as usual, Archer’s instincts are correct. There’s a tawdry, rancid stench of shop-worn glamour to the Hollywood crowd in these pages. On one level, there are these young people, the ones with the looks, Hester, Gabrielle and Lance and then there’s the moneyed crowd pulling the strings, gangster Carl Stern, producer Simon Graf and his certifiable wife Isobel, who bounces in and out of institutions. Then there’s Bassett who hosts the rich and famous while nervously trying to keep them happy, entertained and the drinks flowing.

This is probably my least favourite Archer novel so far. We don’t get much of Archer’s philosophy (always enjoyable) and the tale lacks the usual moodiness. I didn’t buy the murder wrap-up. Many of the characters are flat, but Tony Torres is well-created, and Bassett was fun. This is a story of moral corruption and how the pretty and the young who have their looks, their youth, and their bodies to sell, are exploited as playthings by the rich and famous. All of this moral corruption is laced with the trappings of Hollywood and supported by organized crime. Naturally, the young and beautiful end up dead or kicked to the curb when their attractions fade or pall.

The Ivory Grin: Ross Macdonald (Lew Archer 4)

“The people you love are never the ones that love you.”

Ross Macdonald’s The Ivory Grin centres on a seemingly simple case of finding a young woman, but the case becomes more complicated as the bodies pile up. This tale of jealousy and revenge begins with private detective Lew Archer being hired by a middle-aged woman he dislikes. He finds her waiting for him outside of his office early one morning, and with just two sentences out of her mouth, Archer notes “she had begun to irritate me already.” She wears a “slack suit” with a blue mink stole and her hands are dripping with large diamonds. She alternates between “girlish vivacity and boyish earnestness” neither of which fit this hard-edged woman who is clearly used to being obeyed.

“Call me Una,” she said.

“Do you live in Los Angeles?”

“Not exactly. Where I live doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you what does if you want me to be blunt.”

“I couldn’t bear it if you weren’t.” Her hard dry glance went over me almost tangibly and rested on my mouth. “You look all right. But you sound kind of Hollywood to me.”

I was in no mood to swop compliments. The ragged edge on her voice and her alternation of fair and bad manners bothered me. It was like talking to several persons at once, none of them quite complete.

“Protective coloration.” I caught her glance and held it. “I meet a lot of different types.”

For one thing, Una, as she calls herself, spins Archer a tall tale about needing to find a former employee, a black girl called Lucy. In the first version Una tells Archer that Lucy stole some jewelry and she wants it back. When Archer doesn’t swallow that tale, the second story is that Lucy knows about Una’s “private affairs,” and Una wants to know what company Lucy keeps. Both stories reek, but Archer’s interest is aroused so he takes the case. But things don’t add up–Una knows where Lucy is, where she hangs out and even what she’s wearing.

She produced a crumpled bill and tossed it to me as if were an old piece of Kleenex and I were a wastebasket. I caught it. It was a hundred dollar bill, but I didn’t put it away.

Archer’s used to digging in the grubby lives of his clients, and so often doesn’t get the straight scope, but this woman is over the top: she won’t tell him her real name, and she won’t tell him where she lives. But the trump card that should end it all is that Archer doesn’t like this woman. At all. Archer drives to Bella City, the place where Lucy was spotted, and in hardly any time at all, he sees her. He follows her only to see her tossed from a boarding house, so when Lucy moves to a low-rent hotel, Archer takes the room next door.

The case, which seemed so quickly resolved, becomes complicated. Archer follows Lucy to the grubby practice of a local doctor, a doctor whose femme fatale wife doesn’t fit the image of a small-town doctor’s wife. Curiouser and curiouser, there’s a low-rent PI on Lucy’s tail who gets busy pumping the doctor’s nurse for info. Who is he working for? Turns out that Lucy is somehow involved in a kidnapping case, but Archer doesn’t understand what Lucy’s role was. When Archer finds Lucy with her throat cut, he’s committed to the case–not the client. Archer may be working for “Una” but as always his code of conduct defines his actions. This novel, written in Macdonald’s gritty, sardonic style, is about a tangled mess in which an elusive, opportunistic femme fatale leaves a trail of lovers, creating chaos and moving on. But the tale is also about the depths of human nature–how warped and corrupt people stain everyone they touch sometimes with fatal results.