review of
Ross MacDonald's Blue City
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 23-24, 2020

This'll be the 5th review I've written of bks by Ross MacDonald. Hopefully, I'll be reading another 13 that I have set aside in a pile very soon. I'm reading them in chronological order, this one's from 1947. Reading it, it seemed more brutal than other work of his. That made it seem like a possible homage to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (my paltry review's here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/386293.Red_Harvest ) insofar as their characters go to cities where they uncover massive corruption & havoc is wrought & insofar as both bks have 2 word titles the 1st word of wch is a color.

The character is introduced to the reader as a hitchhiker:

""I'll let you out here, bud. I can't take you down to the depot." He nodded toward the "No Riders" sticker on the windshield. "But in case your connections don't pan out, you want to come down there. It's on Master Street."" - p 2

I'm reminded of the beginning of chapter 2 of John Stenibeck's The Grapes of Wrath:

"Outside, a man walking along the edge of the highway crossed over and approached the truck. He walked slowly to the front of it, put his hand on the shiny fender, and looked at the No Riders sticker on the windshield. For a moment he was about to walk on down the road, but instead he sat on the running board away from the restaurant." - p 5, The Grapes of Wrath, Bantam Books, 1970 paperback edition

Do people read Steinbeck anymore? I hope they do, his bks have a social conscience to them that's profound. It seems to me that Ross MacDonald's work does too. There's a whole world of literature out there written by people who're keen social observers who have something to say about it all, I'm glad they exist.

"He looked at me in surprise, and chewed his blood-stained mustache. "Phone the police?"

""They robbed you, didn't they? They should be behind bars."

""Maybe so," the old man said. "But these fellows have an in with the poilce."

""You know them?"

""I've seen 'em around town. I think the cops brought 'em in for strikebreakers two years ago. They been here ever since."" - p 9

Remember strikebreakers? Are they a vanishing breed in the US? They might be, after all, there're always more subtle ways of making sure that working people get less than we deserve. In other countries, however, all those countries where the so-called 'Free Trade' businesspeople are so fond of locating their factories, strikebreakers are still common. At any rate, I quote the above passage to continue the thread that perhaps Steinbeck & MacDonald aren't so far apart, such a passage might've been at home in Steinbeck. & waddya know?: in the last novel I reviewed by MacDonald, his 1st: The Dark Tunnel (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3710665792 ) the main character encounters a Wobbly & is, himself, accused of being an "unconscious anarchist" — so look-see what we have in this novel:

""One more thing. We recovered the murder weapon and traced it. It was an old Smith and Wesson revolver, and it's definitely the gun that fired the bullets that killed J.D. We found it in the sewer on Mack Street near the entrance to the Mack Building. Up to a certain point it was easy to trace. The daughter of the original purchaser, a man named Teagarden, sold it to Kaufman the secondhand dealer. Kaufman admitted buying it, but claimed that it was stolen from his store a couple of days before the murder."

""You investigated Kaufman?"

""Naturally. He's a shady customer all right, some kind of an anarchist or radical. He writes crazy letters to the newspapers. But he didn't kill your father.["]" - p 23

The main character, Johnny, returns to his hometown after being alienated from his family for several years, only to discover that his father's been murdered. The murder happened not long after his father remarried. Johnny visits his stepmom & quickly starts bullying her w/o really much basis for his suspicions about her yet.

""I understand I'm next in line for J.D.'s property."

""As long as I'm alive I have a perfectly free hand."

"I got up and walked towards her across the room. "Now I know where we stand," I said. "What makes you certain you're going to be alive very long?"" - p 35

Johnny visits the man called an "anarchist" by the policeman who investigated his father's murder.

""What freedom have they got?" he demanded. "Freedom to slave in the factories, vote and think the way the radio and newspapers and political bosses tell them to vote and think, freedom to befuddle their brains in the taverns and the moving picture shows: freedom to be exploited and dispossessed. Let them stand up and fight for their rights!"

""I was wondering," I said slowly, "I was wondering if J.D. Weather could have been shot by somebody who disapproved of him for political reasons."" - p 42

Not much has changed, has it? People no longer have the "freedom to befuddle their brains in the taverns and the moving picture shows" – instead they have the 'freedom' to befuddle their brains w/ expensive prescription drugs of highly dubious benefit for their highly dubious 'Generalized Anxiety Disorder' while their computer befuddles their brains w/ lies, lies, & more lies disguised as education subtexted in thrilling entertainments preapproved by one censor or another — all working for 'their own good', har, har. OR.

"I got up and said: "You're not taking a chance on me. I think some of your ideas are screwy, but you're the first honest man I've talked to here. I won't let you down."" - p 44

Honest men? Remember that concept? Our hero is both honest & tough. It seems that the 2 have to go together if one wants to survive.

""Your memory is bad." I was as tense as he was. "John Weather."

"The knife flew open as it came out of the pocket. My left hand was ready and caught his right wrist. My right arm put a lock on it. He twisted quickly and pulled hard, but not out of my grasp. He was hard to bend, but he bent slowly as I raised my hands locked over his wrist. Slowly his head went down. He sighed almost inaudibly and the knife fell free just before I tore his shoulder loose in its socket." - p 54

&, of course, our hero gradually makes sense of the picture that he's revealing.

""Don't start telling me that my father dirtied this town. Apparently he did his share, but one man can't corrupt a town all by himself. It takes co-operation."

""You're right, Weather. I saw that only too clearly after your father died. You've got to realize that he and I were political enemies for years. I fought him when I was in Cranbridge in the D.A.'s office, and I fought him when I came back here to run for the council. I began to feel that one man was holding back this town, and that he was the man. But I was wrong. He died and things went on as before. It wasn't a man I had to fight—it was a system.["]" - p 89

For one thing, Weather discovers that he's not opposed to killing.

"A cockroach stepped from behind the ketchup, gave me a quick impassive once-over, decided that I was of the Brahmin faith, and walked earnestly across the table on errands of his own. Somebody had left a newspaper on the bench beside me, and I picked it up and swatted the cockroach, permitting his soul to transmigrate into the body of a quartermaster." - pp 94-95

For another, he sees thru the lies of the mainstream narrative w/ the help of someone who knows.

"With the efficient co-operation of our excellent police force, the agitators who would have sabotaged our contribution to the national effort were weeded out and properly dealt with."

[..]

""Pretty hot stuff, eh, Mac?" the waiter said over my shoulder. "I read that one myself."

""You liked it?"

""Don't kid me." He set my plate in front of me and spat on the floor. "My old man and my old lady worked out at Sanford's for the last thirty years. They're gettin' old now, and they make less than they did when they started. My brother was there for a while, till they broke his elbow with a lead pipe and threw him out of town. He was one of the foreign agitators they were talkin' about in this story in the paper. If Bobby was a Communist, I'm Uncle Joe Stalin with bells on."" - p 96

So, you see, while this is a novel about a man returning to his home town, discovering that his father was murdered, & investigating that murder, it's also a political novel based on the notion that societal SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) can be synonymous w/ murderous corruption & hypocrisy — a notion I whole-heartedly share.

"At the far end of the room, between green-blinded windows, there was a shelf labeled: "These Books Are Not To Be Circulated." Some of the titles I noticed were Gargantua and Patagruel, The Sentimental Education, To Have and Have Not, The Wild Palms. It was somehow comforting to know that the good people of the town that supported Kerch were protected against the lubricity of Rabelais, the immorality of Flaubert, the viciousness of Hemingway, and the degradation of Faulker." - pp 142-143

& how did MacDonald himself manage to avoid being on the list? Probably because he wrote good-old-crime-thrillers. Will Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC ever be a banned bk? We're uncomfortably close to that already. ( )

“Blue City” is MacDonald’s 1947 stand-alone novel about John Weather’s return to his hometown (which I don’t think is ever named in the 247-page book). The name Weather is appropriate because this book is as dark, shadowy, and hardboiled as any book could be. Just as in Gil Brewer’s 1957 book “The Angry Dream,” which obviously followed MacDonald’s “Blue City” by a decade, the story is about a young man who returns to his hometown after many years to find his father dead, to find that his father was hated by everyone in town, and to find that the town has turned dark and corrupt and nasty. But, while Brewer set his young man in a small-town in the country, MacDonald sets John Weather in a dark city.

John Weather has not seen his father since age twelve when his parents split up. He always held it against his father and, after his mother died, Weather drifted from town to town and signed up for the European theater in World War II, spending years shooting enemies and haunted by the memories. Weather has now come back to his hometown, to perhaps make amends with his father and to perhaps find work. Within hours after his return, he finds from an old man in a saloon, that his father died two years earlier, that his father brought crime, gambling, and corruption to the city, that his father had married a sexpot of a young lady closer to Weather’s own age and who inherited everything, and that the town is as corrupt as they come with every cop on the take and every citizen scared to speak out. Alone in this town, with almost every hand raised against him, Weather starts poking around and determines that his mission is to find out who killed his father and root out the corruption at its heart.

Weather is an unusual hero in that he is angry and cynical and has few moments of charm. In fact, what is amazing about the book is how dark and squalid and foreboding every page is. I can’t recall even one minute of sunshine in the book. It is not just hardboiled, it is extra- hardboiled. If I were to criticize one thing about this book, it would be that it is perpetually dark and sinister. The cynicism begins on the first page with Weather, who narrates in the first-person, talking about how when you’ve been away from a town where you lived as a kid, you think about it and talk about it as if the air there “were sweeter in the nostrils than any other air.” But, the City started sooner than he expected it to and had “crawled out along the highway.” The truckdriver Weather caught a ride with is asked if he likes the town and Weather is told that “It’s all right if you don’t know any better places.”
Weather is itching for a fight and he finds one around just about every corner. This book is filled with action and Weather is pushing ahead on each and every page with almost no let up in the action. Weather is angry that no one seems to have investigated his father’s murder and he is getting up in everyone’s face about it, throwing out accusations of cover ups.

Weather’s new stepmother is something else entirely. “She had her legs, and the way she moved her body. In her dark silk dress she moved with the free, shining fullness and flow of a seal in water.” “Her live, stirring body in that still room was like a snake in a sealed tomb, fed by unhealthy meat.” Weather thinks about how her body “seemed lost in a dream of its own power and beauty” and how he could “have reached out and taken it” “like a ripe fruit from a tree. But then she was my stepmother,” he explained, “and that would be incestuous. Besides, I hated her guts.”
This book is as hardboiled as it gets. It is well written. The prose is unbelievable and it may be among the best of MacDonald’s work. The story takes the reader through nightclubs, poolhalls, barroom brawls, shootouts, and crime and corruption. The only possible ray of light in the whole deal is a whore with a heart of gold.

The whole story takes place over the course of a day or two and within the confines of the Blue City. Even when Weather is dumped at the outskirts and told to start walking toward Chicago, he has to head back in and finish this deal. This is good writing. It is raw and powerful. And it is hardboiled fiction the way it was really mean to be. Highly recommended. ( )

Very early Macdonald, his similes and metaphors are heavy handed and his style isn't yet developed. Interesting to read this and know he would develop to write the Lew Archer series. Not nearly as good as his later writing, probably not worth reading if you haven't read all of his later work. ( )

A hard-boiled detective story that is definitely dated. ( )

Blue City, an early novel by Kenneth Millar (a.k.a. Ross MacDonald), unsurprisingly, tells a tale of graft and corruption in an urban setting. An anonymous cover artist provides one of paperback fiction’s most unforgettable cover designs: a sinister gigantic hand, presumably emanating from a mysterious crime overlord, manipulates the citizens of Blue City as if they were puppets. -- BCS