Many critics consider this to be Ross Macdonald's finest book, and Macdonald himself professed to agree...perhaps because of the general consensus among critics. I love his work, and this is a good book, but it's not in my top three (The Wycherly Woman, The Chill and The Underground Man, in that order). The fact is that critics are partial to Black Money because it nods self-consciously to Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and such allusions are considered the height of sophistication in the literary world. In a very real sense, Macdonald wrote this novel for the critics after a couple of them had disparaged certain elements of The Chill. Artists are sensitive, and I guess it's not surprising that Macdonald responded to criticism by trying to prove that he could produce a "serious" book, but he needn't have bothered. He was already a first-class writer, and didn't have to demonstrate that to a bunch of stuffy literary people whose readership was a tiny fraction of his own. Like I said, Black Money is good, but I think Macdonald may have overvalued it a little falsely. (Even as he proclaimed this his best novel, however, he had to concede that The Chill contained his finest plotting.) Also, there are a few instances of editorial sloppiness--a rare phenomenon in Macdonald's oeuvre--which deny this book a place among the top tier of his work, in my opinion.

The back cover synopsis for Bantam's 1973 paperback edition tries hard to convey the impression that Macdonald had suddenly turned into Mickey Spillane, and it's downright hilarious: "Lew Archer made a deal with fat little Rich Boy at the posh Montevista Tennis Club. Seems Rich Boy had lost his beautiful fiancée to a stranger with a suspiciously phony French accent. So Rich Boy hired Archer to retrieve the runaway fiancée. Sounded like a fast, clean bundle for old, broke Archer..." You have to wonder who wrote that. (It certainly wasn't Macdonald.) Maybe the publisher was apprehensive about the book's literary pretensions and felt the need to compensate with an overtly hard-boiled teaser?

Black Money is a standard Archer novel in nearly every measurable sense. (And it happens to contain one of Macdonald's most painfully beautiful sentences: "His expression turned faraway, further and further away, as if his mind was climbing back over the curve of time to the source of his life.") The casual reader probably won't even notice the allusions to Gatsby, and those who have enjoyed Macdonald's other books will like this one, too. But it's emphatically not the best thing he ever wrote. ( )

This is an excellent entry in Ross Macdonald's series of novels about private eye Lew Archer. This one has elements of Macdonald's recurrent theme of dark family secrets, but it spreads its concerns a little broader than that. Archer is hired to find out the truth about a man who has swept a wealthy young woman off her feet. As always with Macdonald, guilt and the fear of shame play a heavy role in matters. Macdonald isn't as colorful a writer, generally, as his two colleagues atop the heap of private eye fiction, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but he never fails to tell a compelling story. This is a good one. ( )

One of the better books in the Lew Archer series! ( )

Cuando se contrata a Lew Archer para conseguir los bienes del sospechosamente suave francés que se ha escapado con la novia de su cliente, parece un simple caso de afecto alienado. Las cosas se ven diferentes cuando el misterioso extranjero resulta estar conectado con un suicidio de siete años y una montaña de deudas de juego.

I have no other works by this author nor have read any before, so it was a welcome new start for me. He was married (apparently) to Margaret Millar, who I have read and can recommend, but did not know that when I picked up this book, but was influenced by reason this edition was published as part of the Crime masterworks series, which I cannot resist in a second hand shop.

Set in the 1950s- 60s west coast USA, Lew Archer (the protagonist in some 13 books in the series) is a private detective, who is efficient, does not habitually carry a gun nor throw a punch, and who wants to help people. I don't say this as suggesting that these are meant to his defining features, in the way that Sherlock Holmes wears a dear stalker or that DCI Banks likes a scotch at the end of the day to unwind or that John Rebus likes a drink most times of the day, but rather to suggest that Archer is not your typical rough and ready PI. But he is efficient, thorough and worldly.

The read is very much a noir read and a very good one at that, save that the last 30 pages (of 300) fell away badly and (to my mind) left a very weak resolution of the many loose ends. I don't think the denouement was properly the subject of sufficient, valid clues. Sure it was open, logically, to have reached that conclusion, but not in a fair way.

But until then, it was a great read, which justifies its 4 star rating. I hope that this is a once off flaw, in which case I look forward to reading more of Macdonald/Archer. If it is emblematic of them however, it will suggest that Macdonald is the noir equivalent of Phillip Glass, a composer who I very much like, but who at least during part of his career, had no idea as to how to bring a piece to an end, other than to apply a guillotine and bring it to an absolute abrupt end.

As to the plot? PI Archer is engaged by mid 20s 2nd/3rd generation rich Peter to investigate blow in Francis Martel, supposedly rich and French and a political refugee on the run from the then French Government, who sweeps Peter's fiancee (actual or soon to be?) Virginia (Ginny) off her feet, and whom Peter wants to get back. Set in a small, coastal town which has not only an exclusive Tennis Club and lots of money, along with an underbelly (literally) across the rail tracks, but also (it is not giving anything away that is not on the back cover of the Crime Masterclass edition I was reading) there is gambling and gambling debts and ambition financially and socially aplenty.

Worth a read if mid 20th century US west coast noir is your thing, but I keen to know if Macdonald can go one better.

Big Ship

9 April 2022 ( )