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Lew Archer #14
The Instant Enemy
Generations of murder, greed and deception come home to roost in time for the most shocking conclusion ever in a Lew Archer novel.At first glance, it's an open-and-shut missing persons a headstrong daughter has run off to be with her hothead juvenile delinquent boyfriend. That is until this bush-league Bonnie & Clyde kidnap Stephen Hackett, a local millionaire industrialist. Now, Archer is offered a cool 100 Gs for his safe return by his coquettish heiress mother who has her own mysterious ties to this disturbed duo. But the deeper Archer digs, the more he realizes that nothing is as it seems and everything is questionable. Is the boyfriend a psycho ex-con with murder on the brain or a damaged youngster trying to straighten out his twisted family tree? And is the daughter simply his nympho sex-kitten companion in crime or really a fragile kid, trying to block out horrific memories of bad acid and an unspeakable sex crime?From the Trade Paperback edition.
212 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
Ross Macdonald
160 books806 followersRoss Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 140 reviews
March 17, 2020
Lew Archer is hired by a middle-class couple to find their troubled runaway daughter, and soon learns that she may be traveling with her psychotic boyfriend--and her father's shotgun--toward something that looks a little like a robbery and a whole lot like revenge.
The resolution of the novel is perhaps too complicated, but I found detective Archer's attempts to save these two young people, each admirable and decent in their own way, moving and memorable. I'm sure my reaction was intensified by the fact that I had recently read a biography of Ross Macdonald, and in the course of re-reading this novel I could see both the young novelist himself and his own troubled daughter vividly revealed in the affecting portraits of the daughter and her boyfriend.
At first glance, Macdonald seems to be the most self-effacing and least autobiographical of novelists, concentrating above all on his craft and the quality of his tale, but when you get to know him better you see that every haunted young man, every wounded young woman, is his own younger self and his wayward daughter in disguise, surrounded by characters who are also ghosts from his past.
Macdonald is fond of using the metaphor of the mask, and his characters often use masks to hide their true selves. Yet underneath each character's mask is another, and behind it--if you look carefully--you will see the face of a disciplined novelist whose wounded heart wants to save the damaged children of the world.
April 18, 2024
I had time to decide where to shoot him. If I had liked the man I might have shot to kill. I shot him in the right leg.
This was so moving. Emotionally and literally.
Macdonald outdid himself on this one.
It was first published in 1968.
Be prepared for vivid descriptions of Sunset Strip and a Los Angeles not far removed from what Tarantino described in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and his film of the same title.
Hippie transients, bad LSD trips, multiple murders and a number of beatings Archer has to endure.
By the way - Archer barely throws a punch though he disarms a few people intent on murder.
I had a second slug to fortify my nerves.... I tore [the check] into small pieces and tossed the yellow confetti out the window. It drifted down on the short hairs and the long hairs, the potheads and the acid heads, draft dodgers and dollar chasers, swingers and walking wounded, idiot savants, hard cases, foolish virgins
This starts as a missing/rebellious teenager runaway case which expands to a full-blown multi-generational, multi-murders case bordering on a psychological descent into a quasi-incestuous nigh unsolvable affair.
But then this is a Lew Archer case.
The Lone Ranger of private eyes.
So much rich, delta-dirt writing, you almost expect worms to be crawling across the pages.
Another quote and then I'm out:
"I'm not your conscience. There is a kind of economy in life. You don't spend more than you have, or say more than you know, or throw your weight around more than necessary."
Absolute perfection!
This was so moving. Emotionally and literally.
Macdonald outdid himself on this one.
It was first published in 1968.
Be prepared for vivid descriptions of Sunset Strip and a Los Angeles not far removed from what Tarantino described in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and his film of the same title.
Hippie transients, bad LSD trips, multiple murders and a number of beatings Archer has to endure.
By the way - Archer barely throws a punch though he disarms a few people intent on murder.
I had a second slug to fortify my nerves.... I tore [the check] into small pieces and tossed the yellow confetti out the window. It drifted down on the short hairs and the long hairs, the potheads and the acid heads, draft dodgers and dollar chasers, swingers and walking wounded, idiot savants, hard cases, foolish virgins
This starts as a missing/rebellious teenager runaway case which expands to a full-blown multi-generational, multi-murders case bordering on a psychological descent into a quasi-incestuous nigh unsolvable affair.
But then this is a Lew Archer case.
The Lone Ranger of private eyes.
So much rich, delta-dirt writing, you almost expect worms to be crawling across the pages.
Another quote and then I'm out:
"I'm not your conscience. There is a kind of economy in life. You don't spend more than you have, or say more than you know, or throw your weight around more than necessary."
Absolute perfection!
October 1, 2020
This and the previous Archer novel I read rated 4.5. the other one i gave four stars; so this one five stars. Although utilizing many of the same Macdonald ingredients it does have a higher level of intricacy, with some elements solved early and other mysteries cropping up along the way.
November 17, 2024
Many thanks to Goatboy for pointing me in the direction of Ross Macdonald.
'TIE' arrives fairly late in Macdonald's Lew Archer series so I've no idea how the character (or Macdonald's unique way with a plot) may have progressed over time. I just jumped in at random, hooking into an interesting set-up.
Previously, my only experience with Macdonald was indirect - I'd seen the films Paul Newman had starred in as Archer: 'Harper' and 'The Drowning Pool'. I've always liked Newman but those flicks didn't do much for me (nor, I suspect, for Macdonald).
PIs can be hard to get 'right' - both on the page and on-screen. And perhaps getting them 'right' can be a matter of taste. Or maybe they all just have to be like Chandler's Philip Marlowe in order to pull off that essential combo of 'world-weary', 'misanthropic' and 'acerbic'.
Macdonald seemed to agree. In 'TIE', he establishes Archer's detached method right away:
'TIE' has a LOT of characters. (You might start thinking of a Russian novel.) Initially, Archer is only investigating a missing person case. But things shoot off from there, quickly. As they do, the web of intrigue grows exponentially - with somewhat sordid relationships overlapping with a frequency that's dizzying.
Without much actual sex being involved, the world of Archer's assignment begins to feel incestuous. It seems like everybody involved has *something* on everybody else. It's a bit like taking a stick to a wasp nest.
Macdonald also adds extra 'bread crumbs' into the crime mix - specifically... his missing person case branches off into a separate kidnapping. The peculiar rub is there's no mention of ransom, except that there's talk against it.
All of this makes for a fairly breathless read. There were moments I had difficulty keeping up with who was chasing who - and, suddenly, why.
As much as I love Raymond Chandler (and I do), Macdonald takes the private investigator thing to a whole other level - perhaps richer, more complex, replete with the unanticipated. I probably missed the level of Chandler's unique way with words - Macdonald may lack that particular artistry - but what's evident (at least in this entry) is a whirlwind delivery. A job well-done!
'TIE' arrives fairly late in Macdonald's Lew Archer series so I've no idea how the character (or Macdonald's unique way with a plot) may have progressed over time. I just jumped in at random, hooking into an interesting set-up.
Previously, my only experience with Macdonald was indirect - I'd seen the films Paul Newman had starred in as Archer: 'Harper' and 'The Drowning Pool'. I've always liked Newman but those flicks didn't do much for me (nor, I suspect, for Macdonald).
PIs can be hard to get 'right' - both on the page and on-screen. And perhaps getting them 'right' can be a matter of taste. Or maybe they all just have to be like Chandler's Philip Marlowe in order to pull off that essential combo of 'world-weary', 'misanthropic' and 'acerbic'.
Macdonald seemed to agree. In 'TIE', he establishes Archer's detached method right away:
"Look here, if you're taking sides against me, what do you think we're paying you for?"But, even though Archer maintains solid indifference throughout, Macdonald also seems to lend him more of a level of compassion. ~not that he'd ever really let that slip by making it too obvious.
"For this," I said, "and for a lot of other dull interrogations. You think this is my idea of a social good time?"
'TIE' has a LOT of characters. (You might start thinking of a Russian novel.) Initially, Archer is only investigating a missing person case. But things shoot off from there, quickly. As they do, the web of intrigue grows exponentially - with somewhat sordid relationships overlapping with a frequency that's dizzying.
Without much actual sex being involved, the world of Archer's assignment begins to feel incestuous. It seems like everybody involved has *something* on everybody else. It's a bit like taking a stick to a wasp nest.
Macdonald also adds extra 'bread crumbs' into the crime mix - specifically... his missing person case branches off into a separate kidnapping. The peculiar rub is there's no mention of ransom, except that there's talk against it.
All of this makes for a fairly breathless read. There were moments I had difficulty keeping up with who was chasing who - and, suddenly, why.
As much as I love Raymond Chandler (and I do), Macdonald takes the private investigator thing to a whole other level - perhaps richer, more complex, replete with the unanticipated. I probably missed the level of Chandler's unique way with words - Macdonald may lack that particular artistry - but what's evident (at least in this entry) is a whirlwind delivery. A job well-done!
November 2, 2023
From 1968
Gothic and convoluted family drama. I say Gothic because Ross Macdonald always writes about the past, what happened years before affecting the present. And obviously this happens in families.
He also writes about psycho suicidal teenaged girls. Because he had one. This is still two years before his only daughter was to die.
Gothic and convoluted family drama. I say Gothic because Ross Macdonald always writes about the past, what happened years before affecting the present. And obviously this happens in families.
He also writes about psycho suicidal teenaged girls. Because he had one. This is still two years before his only daughter was to die.
July 22, 2014
I don’t trust people who say they like mysteries. They seem to read for different reasons than me, not better or worse, I guess, but they’re a different species and I don’t know what to say to them. I picture grey-haired cat ladies with Agatha Christie fixations or overweight insurance salesmen obsessed with Sherlock Holmes minutiae. Or I think back to the first time I met one of my wife’s cousins. She saw I was reading The Secret History and said, “Oh, that looks great! I love whodunits!”
In turn, I stay away from the “mystery” aisles. I know little about Hammett, Chandler, etc. because of their weak and perhaps unsubstantiated connection to the genre. However, about fifteen years ago my friend Dan hooked me onto Ellroy and I worked through his entire catalog. And I’ve glanced, every now and then, in the direction of others who earn (or acquire while failing to earn) comparisons to Mr. E. Ross Macdonald, a writer of whom I had never heard until I saw a reference on goodreads last week, precedes Ellroy but nonetheless provided a welcome surprise. After reading my first Macdonald I’d feel comfortable recommending his work to the Ellroy-obsessed, and I don’t take that type of recommendation lightly. I could see the authors admiring each other’s work.
The Instant Enemy, one of a series of Lew Archer novels, catches fire within the first twenty pages. Mr. Archer, a weatherbeaten private detective, takes on a case in which he agrees to find the rebellious daughter of a wealthy, preening middle manager. In the process he encounters her broken boyfriend, a barren farm with a terrifying history, and a loaded family with too much to hide for long. Mr. Archer lives weary. He’s not a superhero and Macdonald’s prose mirrors the character’s steady, careful pace. Archer, it seems, has witnessed enough terror both to try and save his cases’ victims and to know sometimes people pursue their own demons straight to hell with full knowledge of exactly what they’re doing.
I read The Instant Enemy over a long weekend on a hot front porch, avoiding the sun, and the second I finished I requested more Macdonald from the local library system. In a couple weeks I return to my wife’s family’s house out east, and I’ll need books like this, so I’m glad to have found the author. I get the feeling I’ve missed more out there like him.
In turn, I stay away from the “mystery” aisles. I know little about Hammett, Chandler, etc. because of their weak and perhaps unsubstantiated connection to the genre. However, about fifteen years ago my friend Dan hooked me onto Ellroy and I worked through his entire catalog. And I’ve glanced, every now and then, in the direction of others who earn (or acquire while failing to earn) comparisons to Mr. E. Ross Macdonald, a writer of whom I had never heard until I saw a reference on goodreads last week, precedes Ellroy but nonetheless provided a welcome surprise. After reading my first Macdonald I’d feel comfortable recommending his work to the Ellroy-obsessed, and I don’t take that type of recommendation lightly. I could see the authors admiring each other’s work.
The Instant Enemy, one of a series of Lew Archer novels, catches fire within the first twenty pages. Mr. Archer, a weatherbeaten private detective, takes on a case in which he agrees to find the rebellious daughter of a wealthy, preening middle manager. In the process he encounters her broken boyfriend, a barren farm with a terrifying history, and a loaded family with too much to hide for long. Mr. Archer lives weary. He’s not a superhero and Macdonald’s prose mirrors the character’s steady, careful pace. Archer, it seems, has witnessed enough terror both to try and save his cases’ victims and to know sometimes people pursue their own demons straight to hell with full knowledge of exactly what they’re doing.
I read The Instant Enemy over a long weekend on a hot front porch, avoiding the sun, and the second I finished I requested more Macdonald from the local library system. In a couple weeks I return to my wife’s family’s house out east, and I’ll need books like this, so I’m glad to have found the author. I get the feeling I’ve missed more out there like him.
December 19, 2024
What begins as a seemingly straightforward search for a runaway teenage girl quickly spirals into a web of deception involving family secrets resulting in blackmail, kidnapping, sexual violence and murder.
Archer, as always, is sharp, empathetic, and relentless, functioning as both an investigator and a surrogate therapist for the damaged souls he encounters. When there is so much injustice in this world and evil often wins, it is so comforting to watch Lew Archer untangle the case, clear the innocent's names and prove the bad guys guilty. This Don Quixote of California is one of the two reasons why I find Lew Archer novels so compelling. The second reason is Macdonald's lean and poetic prose - it always keeps the reader in focus. On the other hand, the combination of the vivid descriptions of the Californian landscape, the multi-dimensional characters and the deeply human drama make Macdonald's works unputdownable.
Archer, as always, is sharp, empathetic, and relentless, functioning as both an investigator and a surrogate therapist for the damaged souls he encounters. When there is so much injustice in this world and evil often wins, it is so comforting to watch Lew Archer untangle the case, clear the innocent's names and prove the bad guys guilty. This Don Quixote of California is one of the two reasons why I find Lew Archer novels so compelling. The second reason is Macdonald's lean and poetic prose - it always keeps the reader in focus. On the other hand, the combination of the vivid descriptions of the Californian landscape, the multi-dimensional characters and the deeply human drama make Macdonald's works unputdownable.
July 16, 2024
Set in 1968 Los Angeles with a town torn apart by the strung-out Jones of the hippie movement and riots on the Sunset Strip, The Instant Enemy starts out with private eye Lew Archer being hired by a Woodland Hills couple to trace down their missing seventeen-year-old daughter (Sandy Sebastian) (and the shotgun that disappeared with her). Keith and Bernice Sebastian, the clients, (as they often are) were not quite as helpful as they could be, not wanting to make a stink about it or to let Archer talk to the girl’s friends or to read her diary. All they reveal is that Sandy’s grades started slipping after she met a nineteen-year-old hooligan, Davy, who Keith hunted down in a weird West Hollywood joint where he threatened to blow Davy’s head off. The opening sets off a whole lot of ideas about how parents in 1968 (and now too) are not really connecting with their teenage children, leaving them open to predators like Davy. Heidi Gensler, Sandy’s best friend and confidante, was able to give Archer a lead on where Davy lives.
And once Archer begins tracking Davy down, a whole world of family secrets opens up to crimes committed long ago and lives upended and turned about. Davy and Sandy embark on a career, part Bonnie and Clyde, part Patricia Hearst, and part Manson, kidnapping a wealthy friend of the Sebastians, Stephen Hackett. And without much to go on, Archer, who has been hired to find and protect dear innocent Sandy, starts poking around and finding things more difficult and more complicated than he could ever have imagined.
This being a crime novel, there are of course a never-ending trail of corpses and the realization that it did not have to be this way. The solution is not altogether evident until the end when Archer puts all the clues together finally and realizes how much evil there is in the world and how troubled so many are. Smoothly written, but keep a scorecard handy to mark down who all the players are and their connections to each other because it might get complicated.
And once Archer begins tracking Davy down, a whole world of family secrets opens up to crimes committed long ago and lives upended and turned about. Davy and Sandy embark on a career, part Bonnie and Clyde, part Patricia Hearst, and part Manson, kidnapping a wealthy friend of the Sebastians, Stephen Hackett. And without much to go on, Archer, who has been hired to find and protect dear innocent Sandy, starts poking around and finding things more difficult and more complicated than he could ever have imagined.
This being a crime novel, there are of course a never-ending trail of corpses and the realization that it did not have to be this way. The solution is not altogether evident until the end when Archer puts all the clues together finally and realizes how much evil there is in the world and how troubled so many are. Smoothly written, but keep a scorecard handy to mark down who all the players are and their connections to each other because it might get complicated.
November 12, 2011
"The Instant Enemy" is a slim, engaging book that deserves four and maybe four and one-half stars. I read it while bouncing between Boston and Toronto during a short business trip. I had "saved it" up as a treat (while reading books on Physics, HTML, Accounting, CSS and other similarly exciting materials) and it was the perfect size to slip into my laptop bag.
As the author's (and his detective's) styles evolved, he often incorporated the same key elements: crimes that spanned two or more generations, links (usually sexual) between disparate characters, class distinctions, and an aggrieved character's quest. This book has all of those plus his tight and colorful writing. What this book has little of is the "psychological insight" that Archer displays in many of the other novels. It makes him seem more "hard-boiled" (in the sense of Philip Marlowe or "The Continental Op") than in other novels.
As always, he has the knack of understanding when a person is avoiding the truth (or some part of it) and if a character has an hidden problem that must be solved. There is just less introspection on Archer's part and more of a take-it-in-stride response to these things. (There is also less of the book devoted to his involvement (or attempts to be swayed by) one or more female characters. These differences do not make the novel better or worse than other Lew Archer novels; just a different flavor.
Personally, I enjoyed the book as much as any I have read before. It has the tight and twisty plot that is the hallmark of the author along with his punchy and (as I call it) "lush" prose style. Here's an example of it from page 127.
"I felt surprisingly good. If Mrs. Krug was alive and able to tell me where the ranch was, I could break the case before morning. I even let a part of my mind play with the question of what I might do with a hundred thousand dollars."
"Hell, I could even retire. The possibility jarred me. I had to admit to myself that I lived for nights like these, moving across the city's great broken body, making connections among its millions of cells. I had a crazy wish or fantasy that some day before I died, if I made all the right neural connections, the city would come all the way alive. Like the Bride of Frankenstein."
Wow. There is so much that I like about the author and hist detective packed into these two paragraphs. This passage has both one of the rare, but deepest, "introspective" sections of this or any other Archer story. The man is confronted by the fact that he might not have to work ($100K in 1968 went a long way when some of the best salaries were $20K/year). Instead of the more mundane thoughts of how he might live off the money, or continue to work, but hire associates and a secretary, our man exposes one of his deepest feelings.
It has always been clear that Archer enjoys the "chase". In most of the stories he goes virtually non-stop from Page 1 to the end; chasing clues, working with only a quick nap here of there for days at a time, and trying to solve the case before he has to give it to the local law enforcement ( or before they solve it themselves.) But here, he admits that he is essentially an "adrenaline junkie" but one with a unique goal. And, it's how that goal is described that is part of Ross Macdonald's magic. I'm sure that the concept of making connections among "cells" in the city isn't his alone, but to re-cast it so that the city itself might "come alive" (rather than Archer)and to link that to a cult horror movie of the 1930s is just so clever and unexpected. To cap it off, he chooses the sequel, rather than the original film to illustrate the point.
There is one other comment that I wanted to expand on. The "class distinctions" that are used in these books are often an essential element of how characters relate to each other and Archer. There is the expected class of "betters" that see ordinary people (and those in unsavory professions such as "Private Detective") as a group that should be avoided, or if necessary treated with a certain "distance". Archer encounters this type both as employers and as parts of his investigation. Whether they are from "old money" or the "nouveau riche", Archer often surprises them with his knowledge of arts, culture, or people. As expected, often the newly-better-off are more critical of and hostile to those who are beneath them economically.
But there is also a realistic, petty, "class warfare" that Macdonald wields. It may be an "ordinary" person who draws a sharp distinction from those who live from crime, or prostitution, or just on the wrong side of town. It may equally be someone from that poorer community who denigrates a former friend, neighbor, or even family member because they found some way to move up a notch or two. We believe in these attitudes and characters because there is a harsh realism to each of these feelings. We accept that these emotions can drive the plot in many ways: to seek out a past or right a wrong, to protect a loved one, to cover up a sin from days gone by.
Ross Macdonald is a master of his craft. Although he has been dead for almost thirty years, he left a wonderful legacy for all time. If you've never done so, pick up one of his books and discover the joy of reading some of the best crime fiction ever written.
As the author's (and his detective's) styles evolved, he often incorporated the same key elements: crimes that spanned two or more generations, links (usually sexual) between disparate characters, class distinctions, and an aggrieved character's quest. This book has all of those plus his tight and colorful writing. What this book has little of is the "psychological insight" that Archer displays in many of the other novels. It makes him seem more "hard-boiled" (in the sense of Philip Marlowe or "The Continental Op") than in other novels.
As always, he has the knack of understanding when a person is avoiding the truth (or some part of it) and if a character has an hidden problem that must be solved. There is just less introspection on Archer's part and more of a take-it-in-stride response to these things. (There is also less of the book devoted to his involvement (or attempts to be swayed by) one or more female characters. These differences do not make the novel better or worse than other Lew Archer novels; just a different flavor.
Personally, I enjoyed the book as much as any I have read before. It has the tight and twisty plot that is the hallmark of the author along with his punchy and (as I call it) "lush" prose style. Here's an example of it from page 127.
"I felt surprisingly good. If Mrs. Krug was alive and able to tell me where the ranch was, I could break the case before morning. I even let a part of my mind play with the question of what I might do with a hundred thousand dollars."
"Hell, I could even retire. The possibility jarred me. I had to admit to myself that I lived for nights like these, moving across the city's great broken body, making connections among its millions of cells. I had a crazy wish or fantasy that some day before I died, if I made all the right neural connections, the city would come all the way alive. Like the Bride of Frankenstein."
Wow. There is so much that I like about the author and hist detective packed into these two paragraphs. This passage has both one of the rare, but deepest, "introspective" sections of this or any other Archer story. The man is confronted by the fact that he might not have to work ($100K in 1968 went a long way when some of the best salaries were $20K/year). Instead of the more mundane thoughts of how he might live off the money, or continue to work, but hire associates and a secretary, our man exposes one of his deepest feelings.
It has always been clear that Archer enjoys the "chase". In most of the stories he goes virtually non-stop from Page 1 to the end; chasing clues, working with only a quick nap here of there for days at a time, and trying to solve the case before he has to give it to the local law enforcement ( or before they solve it themselves.) But here, he admits that he is essentially an "adrenaline junkie" but one with a unique goal. And, it's how that goal is described that is part of Ross Macdonald's magic. I'm sure that the concept of making connections among "cells" in the city isn't his alone, but to re-cast it so that the city itself might "come alive" (rather than Archer)and to link that to a cult horror movie of the 1930s is just so clever and unexpected. To cap it off, he chooses the sequel, rather than the original film to illustrate the point.
There is one other comment that I wanted to expand on. The "class distinctions" that are used in these books are often an essential element of how characters relate to each other and Archer. There is the expected class of "betters" that see ordinary people (and those in unsavory professions such as "Private Detective") as a group that should be avoided, or if necessary treated with a certain "distance". Archer encounters this type both as employers and as parts of his investigation. Whether they are from "old money" or the "nouveau riche", Archer often surprises them with his knowledge of arts, culture, or people. As expected, often the newly-better-off are more critical of and hostile to those who are beneath them economically.
But there is also a realistic, petty, "class warfare" that Macdonald wields. It may be an "ordinary" person who draws a sharp distinction from those who live from crime, or prostitution, or just on the wrong side of town. It may equally be someone from that poorer community who denigrates a former friend, neighbor, or even family member because they found some way to move up a notch or two. We believe in these attitudes and characters because there is a harsh realism to each of these feelings. We accept that these emotions can drive the plot in many ways: to seek out a past or right a wrong, to protect a loved one, to cover up a sin from days gone by.
Ross Macdonald is a master of his craft. Although he has been dead for almost thirty years, he left a wonderful legacy for all time. If you've never done so, pick up one of his books and discover the joy of reading some of the best crime fiction ever written.
August 26, 2021
Mid-20th Century North American Crime and Mystery
My Favorites: #22 (of 250)
HOOK - 3 stars: "There was light early morning traffic on Sepulveda...everything looked fresh and new and awesome as creation..." I don't much like 'weather-report-openers' but MacDonald smartly puts the weather in the background quickly and we're off to a new day which ends on page 1 with the disappearance of a daughter. Things aren't so awesome after all, and in the space of a few paragraphs.
PACE = 5 stars: Relentless action builds beautifully from that first page. At 88,800 words (about average for a mystery novel) there isn't a wasted moment.
PLOT=3: Sandy Sebastian steals her father's shotgun and shells and takes off with Davy. Lew Archer, P.I., is hired to track Davy and Sandy. Lew finds them and readers get a blow-by-blow choreographed beauty of a fight: Davy wins and Lew knows to just walk away (this time). Then we learn Davy has sawed off the stolen shotgun and his target might be Stephen Hackett, Keith Sebastian's boss. And, oh, how the family secrets kick in. The plot is very good, very tight, but a key bit of information is held till late in the book.
CHARACTERS =5: Sandy and her father, Keith, and her mother, Bernice have issues. Sandy's best friend, Heidi, becomes her un-best friend quickly. Davy's backstory is sensational (he spends a night, as a 3 year-old, sitting beside a train track and his father's decapitated head) and surprising. This is a great cast of about 20 major characters, and MacDonald keeps them all moving and flowing in and out of the story perfectly.
ATMOSPHERE/PLACE =5: Davy's formative young years are spent in a burned down shack covered with tarpaper. But Sandy's home life is of the "rich and famous". The contrast is painful, the collision hurts even more. Naturally, it's all set in the ugly side of Southern California.
SUMMARY: My rating is 4.2 for a sensational cast and those brilliantly contrasted worlds in which the characters live. Among the best by this author.
My Favorites: #22 (of 250)
HOOK - 3 stars: "There was light early morning traffic on Sepulveda...everything looked fresh and new and awesome as creation..." I don't much like 'weather-report-openers' but MacDonald smartly puts the weather in the background quickly and we're off to a new day which ends on page 1 with the disappearance of a daughter. Things aren't so awesome after all, and in the space of a few paragraphs.
PACE = 5 stars: Relentless action builds beautifully from that first page. At 88,800 words (about average for a mystery novel) there isn't a wasted moment.
PLOT=3: Sandy Sebastian steals her father's shotgun and shells and takes off with Davy. Lew Archer, P.I., is hired to track Davy and Sandy. Lew finds them and readers get a blow-by-blow choreographed beauty of a fight: Davy wins and Lew knows to just walk away (this time). Then we learn Davy has sawed off the stolen shotgun and his target might be Stephen Hackett, Keith Sebastian's boss. And, oh, how the family secrets kick in. The plot is very good, very tight, but a key bit of information is held till late in the book.
CHARACTERS =5: Sandy and her father, Keith, and her mother, Bernice have issues. Sandy's best friend, Heidi, becomes her un-best friend quickly. Davy's backstory is sensational (he spends a night, as a 3 year-old, sitting beside a train track and his father's decapitated head) and surprising. This is a great cast of about 20 major characters, and MacDonald keeps them all moving and flowing in and out of the story perfectly.
ATMOSPHERE/PLACE =5: Davy's formative young years are spent in a burned down shack covered with tarpaper. But Sandy's home life is of the "rich and famous". The contrast is painful, the collision hurts even more. Naturally, it's all set in the ugly side of Southern California.
SUMMARY: My rating is 4.2 for a sensational cast and those brilliantly contrasted worlds in which the characters live. Among the best by this author.
July 22, 2022
A first-rate Archer.
August 17, 2015
After reading a Frank Miller chowderhead fest claiming itself to be noir I needed to clear the decks with something written by an intelligent writer. The Instant Enemy fitted the bill quite well, and then some.
The Instant Enemy is about Investigator Lew Archer returning a rich teenage runaway involved with a deranged boyfriend, out for familial revenge. I could go into more details of the family secrets and scandals that unfold, but what really grabbed me was the overall surrealist tone to the novel. The psychopathic boyfriend, Davy Spanner is the main focus of the book, and yet we only really see him for maybe three pages out of the entire novel. It's weird, he inhabits the entire book like some phantom, barely existing at all and yet remaining as the key that unlocks all the secrets in this very strange book.
The Instant Enemy is about Investigator Lew Archer returning a rich teenage runaway involved with a deranged boyfriend, out for familial revenge. I could go into more details of the family secrets and scandals that unfold, but what really grabbed me was the overall surrealist tone to the novel. The psychopathic boyfriend, Davy Spanner is the main focus of the book, and yet we only really see him for maybe three pages out of the entire novel. It's weird, he inhabits the entire book like some phantom, barely existing at all and yet remaining as the key that unlocks all the secrets in this very strange book.
March 31, 2017
A woman beaten to death, the ex-cop spying on her a few houses away, his incriminating recording and its implications to the mysterious beheading of a failed farmer that took place nearly two decades before, the son of the murdered who grew up to be an angry delinquent, the scheme he hatches with a good girl gone bad, her lily-livered father whose shotgun they steal and whose boss they snatch, the mother of the kidnapped banker who will pay big to see that her favorite son is returned to her safely, and hundreds of tasty similes to tie the whole mystery together—all in a day’s work for Lew Archer, the roving moral consciousness who navigates each of Ross Macdonald’s superior private eye mysteries.
April 19, 2018
MacDonald goes 2 for 2! Maybe now I can explain what this guy's all about. This is first-class mystery / noir / hard-boiled crime fiction, with pretty much all the trappings you'd expect: a relentless, brilliant, sarcastic, secretly idealistic detective (Lew Archer, who says "everything matters" and means it); a seedy, secret-stuffed urban setting (L.A., never more like the L.A. of your dreams); a labyrinthine plot that might've taken 500 pages to unwind, but that MacDonald artfully condenses to 250 (it can be hard to keep it straight); an epic cast of morally ambiguous characters (they can be hard to keep straight); terse, often funny, often brutal first person narration rife with classic noir metaphorical imagery; and, yeah, sex and drugs and violence. I guess what makes MacDonald special-- what makes him the equal or better of Chandler, in many people's minds-- is his way with motive. A student (and patient) of psychiatry, he seems especially concerned with how people are fucked up, and how they got that way. Both "The Instant Enemy" and "Black Money" start with a seemingly innocuous situation (i.e. "find the girl") and work backward, until we see chains of misdeed and anxiety and repression and death that connect and strangle generations of men and women.
"Black Money" was a beautifully done Gatsby knock-off, and its main motifs were race, class, and wealth. "The Instant Enemy" is about class, too, but also generation conflict, the counterculture, families, fathers, memory. It covers a LOT of ground for a detective novel... it cover a lot of ground for any novel... And sometimes I wondered if MacDonald wasn't introducing too many elements, too many characters to the plot. I guess what makes you love him is how he ties it all together, at the end. He doesn't seal the case shut completely-- human complexity can't allow that. But the last chapter of "The Instant Enemy"-- like the last chapter of "Black Money"-- is a fucking model of concision, dramatic irony, and a kind of tragic weight.
I think I liked this better than "Black Money," though it is very, very similar. Reading it made me appreciate "Black Money" more. I've giving this one four stars to balance out "Money's" five-star review. These are 4.5 star novels both, easily.
"Black Money" was a beautifully done Gatsby knock-off, and its main motifs were race, class, and wealth. "The Instant Enemy" is about class, too, but also generation conflict, the counterculture, families, fathers, memory. It covers a LOT of ground for a detective novel... it cover a lot of ground for any novel... And sometimes I wondered if MacDonald wasn't introducing too many elements, too many characters to the plot. I guess what makes you love him is how he ties it all together, at the end. He doesn't seal the case shut completely-- human complexity can't allow that. But the last chapter of "The Instant Enemy"-- like the last chapter of "Black Money"-- is a fucking model of concision, dramatic irony, and a kind of tragic weight.
I think I liked this better than "Black Money," though it is very, very similar. Reading it made me appreciate "Black Money" more. I've giving this one four stars to balance out "Money's" five-star review. These are 4.5 star novels both, easily.
May 3, 2012
What makes Ross Macdonald so interesting? I have often wondered why but to me it has always been a keen sense of the underlying angst of California in the post war period and the rise of such things as teenage culture, suburban crime and the rise of the "mobile family".
In The Instant Enemy Macdonald asks a very simple question, how does a parent react to the fact that one of their teenage children would participate willingly in a crime.And, typically of Macdonald, these parents are wealthy, amoral and, at times downright stupid, which means that Lew Archer is going to have to navigate through the ridiculous and grim sides of crime while balancing the warring and Freudian inspired parties.
Archer, unlike Chandler's characters, is not a loner created by the social conditions, he is in fact a loner by choice and that is what makes him so damn likeable....It is also why so many critics have ignored him, because as they say the mysterious is far more interesting..whereas the world of Lew Archer, is far, far more realistic and more interesting.
In The Instant Enemy Macdonald asks a very simple question, how does a parent react to the fact that one of their teenage children would participate willingly in a crime.And, typically of Macdonald, these parents are wealthy, amoral and, at times downright stupid, which means that Lew Archer is going to have to navigate through the ridiculous and grim sides of crime while balancing the warring and Freudian inspired parties.
Archer, unlike Chandler's characters, is not a loner created by the social conditions, he is in fact a loner by choice and that is what makes him so damn likeable....It is also why so many critics have ignored him, because as they say the mysterious is far more interesting..whereas the world of Lew Archer, is far, far more realistic and more interesting.
February 24, 2022
Ok, what does the title have to do with the plot?
Did I mention how I love a good noir?
Did I mention how in those noir books everyone seems to know everyone?
Ok, this was another great book by Ross Macdonald. Maybe not my favourite, but still very, very good. I don't think I've read another that had so many crazy plot twists. It seemed to reach its conclusion a number of times, only for some event to shake everything up. And the ending was simply crazy, even when I thought we already know everything. As usual, very well-written (and completely dysfunctional) characters and a slightly convoluted but very engaging plot.
Seriously, this year seems to be the year of Ross Macdonald for me.
Did I mention how I love a good noir?
Did I mention how in those noir books everyone seems to know everyone?
Ok, this was another great book by Ross Macdonald. Maybe not my favourite, but still very, very good. I don't think I've read another that had so many crazy plot twists. It seemed to reach its conclusion a number of times, only for some event to shake everything up. And the ending was simply crazy, even when I thought we already know everything. As usual, very well-written (and completely dysfunctional) characters and a slightly convoluted but very engaging plot.
Seriously, this year seems to be the year of Ross Macdonald for me.
January 14, 2021
Utterly forgettable, but a fun afternoon diversion.
Read
June 30, 2018The story of sad-eyed tough guy Lew Archer’s attempt to save the life of a troubled young hooligan, and the endless spurt of tragic back story which comes out as a result. You know Ross McDonald is one of the greats because even though this book does not make any motherfucking sense it’s still fabulous. With a chalkboard I could not follow along with the labyrinthine complexities of this investigation, but the writing is on point, and the moral version defined within – a sadder, more sympathetic one then offered by his predecessors – is more than worth the price of admission.
June 17, 2021
Page 50 The mother was introduced to me as Mrs Marburg. She looked at me with the arithmetical eye of an aging professional beauty: would I be viable I bed?
Page 63 No matter how unrewarding their own married lives may be, women seem to love the idea of weddings. Mrs Spanner’s wedding dream died hard. I watched it die.
Page 76 She was a middle-aged blond woman whose face had been carefully made up at some point earlier in the day. Erosion had set in. In the midst of it her eyes regarded me with that steady look of hurt suspicion which takes years to develop.
Page 103 Mrs Marburg was evidently one of those stubborn souls who reacted to trouble by trying to take charge of a situation and make all the decisions. But the thing was slipping out of her hands and she knew it.
Page 110. Albert Blevins opened the door a few inches. He wasn’t terribly old, but his body was set in cast of permanent stubborn failure. His clear blue eyes had the oddly innocent look of a man who had never been completely broken into human society. You used to see such men in the small towns, in the desert, on the road. Now they collected in the hollow cores of the cities.
Page 169. I felt a certain liking for Sidney Marburg, or a tolerance bordering on liking. Perhaps he had sold out for money in marrying Ruth, who was nearly 30 years older. But like a shrewd agent he’d held back a percentage of himself.
Page 195. Mamie Hagedorn sustained the illusion. ..a small woman whose gold slippered feet dangled clear of the parquet floor. She was wearing a rather formal high-necked dress. She had a pouter pigeon bosom, a rouged and raddled face, hair or a wig which was a particularly horrible shade of iridescent ted. But I liked the way her smile broke up her face.
Page 240. I had a second slug to fortify my nerves. Then I got Mrs Marburg’s check out of the safe. I tore it into small pieces and tossed the yellow confetti out the window. It drifted down on the short hairs and the long hairs, the potheads and the acid heads, draft dodgers and dollar chasers, swingers and walking wounded, idiot saints, hard cases, foolish virgins.
A great ending of a man who decides he’s not for sale.
Page 63 No matter how unrewarding their own married lives may be, women seem to love the idea of weddings. Mrs Spanner’s wedding dream died hard. I watched it die.
Page 76 She was a middle-aged blond woman whose face had been carefully made up at some point earlier in the day. Erosion had set in. In the midst of it her eyes regarded me with that steady look of hurt suspicion which takes years to develop.
Page 103 Mrs Marburg was evidently one of those stubborn souls who reacted to trouble by trying to take charge of a situation and make all the decisions. But the thing was slipping out of her hands and she knew it.
Page 110. Albert Blevins opened the door a few inches. He wasn’t terribly old, but his body was set in cast of permanent stubborn failure. His clear blue eyes had the oddly innocent look of a man who had never been completely broken into human society. You used to see such men in the small towns, in the desert, on the road. Now they collected in the hollow cores of the cities.
Page 169. I felt a certain liking for Sidney Marburg, or a tolerance bordering on liking. Perhaps he had sold out for money in marrying Ruth, who was nearly 30 years older. But like a shrewd agent he’d held back a percentage of himself.
Page 195. Mamie Hagedorn sustained the illusion. ..a small woman whose gold slippered feet dangled clear of the parquet floor. She was wearing a rather formal high-necked dress. She had a pouter pigeon bosom, a rouged and raddled face, hair or a wig which was a particularly horrible shade of iridescent ted. But I liked the way her smile broke up her face.
Page 240. I had a second slug to fortify my nerves. Then I got Mrs Marburg’s check out of the safe. I tore it into small pieces and tossed the yellow confetti out the window. It drifted down on the short hairs and the long hairs, the potheads and the acid heads, draft dodgers and dollar chasers, swingers and walking wounded, idiot saints, hard cases, foolish virgins.
A great ending of a man who decides he’s not for sale.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 15, 2016
"Our hands touched as he gave the picture back to me. I felt a kind of short-circuit, a buzzing and burning, as if I had grounded the present in the actual flesh of the past.
Time blurred like tears for an instant."
My current re-read of The Instant Enemy (1968), the fourteenth entry in the extraordinary series featuring the private eye Lew Archer, has been a pleasant surprise. The excellent writing, Ross Macdonald's trademark, is thoroughly satisfying and while the plot is extremely complicated it holds attention almost to the very end. I think the novel is a bit underrated in that it is not universally considered one of the best in the series.
Archer arrives in a mansion in Woodland Hills where he meets Mr. and Mrs. Sebastian who blame each other for their 17-year-old daughter, Sandy, running away from home. What's worse, she seems to have taken the shotgun and a box of shells with her. The Sebastians suspect that Sandy is with Davy, a young man with criminal past. They hire Archer to bring their daughter back home since Mr. Sebastian is deadly afraid of offending his boss, Mr. Hackett, and does not want to contact the police. With the help of a friend of Sandy Archer quickly finds the missing girl but Davy assaults Archer and the young couple manage to escape. The case quickly grows to vast proportions: it involves kidnapping, murders, and - of course - connections emerge to events from a long time ago. The main characters involved in both the present and the past time frames are Mr. Hackett, his family, and a retired cop still working on an unsolved case. Everything seems to center on Davy and people close to him: his probation officer as well as his high-school counselor have important roles in the plot. While Davy may be driven by the need to understand his roots, almost everything that everybody else does goes back to money and sex.
The web of interconnections between so many people involved in the case is supremely complicated, yet the author manages the tangle of threads with a steady hand almost to the very end. The classical Macdonald's present and past setup is multidimensional yet clear. The stunning phrase from the epigraph, "as if I had grounded the present in the actual flesh of the past," distills the essence of the author's method of constructing the plot. Unlike some other Macdonald's works The Instant Enemy does it not rely on artificial devices to move the plot or on convenient coincidences. Archer even notices:
The references to repressed memories of one of the characters sound silly, yet, after all, this was written in 1967 and the New Age shtick is understandable. By the way, Archer notices graffiti saying MAKE SENSE NOT WAR, a nice Sixties twist.
And one more lovely Macdonald quote:
Time blurred like tears for an instant."
My current re-read of The Instant Enemy (1968), the fourteenth entry in the extraordinary series featuring the private eye Lew Archer, has been a pleasant surprise. The excellent writing, Ross Macdonald's trademark, is thoroughly satisfying and while the plot is extremely complicated it holds attention almost to the very end. I think the novel is a bit underrated in that it is not universally considered one of the best in the series.
Archer arrives in a mansion in Woodland Hills where he meets Mr. and Mrs. Sebastian who blame each other for their 17-year-old daughter, Sandy, running away from home. What's worse, she seems to have taken the shotgun and a box of shells with her. The Sebastians suspect that Sandy is with Davy, a young man with criminal past. They hire Archer to bring their daughter back home since Mr. Sebastian is deadly afraid of offending his boss, Mr. Hackett, and does not want to contact the police. With the help of a friend of Sandy Archer quickly finds the missing girl but Davy assaults Archer and the young couple manage to escape. The case quickly grows to vast proportions: it involves kidnapping, murders, and - of course - connections emerge to events from a long time ago. The main characters involved in both the present and the past time frames are Mr. Hackett, his family, and a retired cop still working on an unsolved case. Everything seems to center on Davy and people close to him: his probation officer as well as his high-school counselor have important roles in the plot. While Davy may be driven by the need to understand his roots, almost everything that everybody else does goes back to money and sex.
The web of interconnections between so many people involved in the case is supremely complicated, yet the author manages the tangle of threads with a steady hand almost to the very end. The classical Macdonald's present and past setup is multidimensional yet clear. The stunning phrase from the epigraph, "as if I had grounded the present in the actual flesh of the past," distills the essence of the author's method of constructing the plot. Unlike some other Macdonald's works The Instant Enemy does it not rely on artificial devices to move the plot or on convenient coincidences. Archer even notices:
"Coincidences seldom happen in my work. If you dig deep enough, you can nearly always find their single bifurcating roots."The classic Macdonald prose wonderfully captures Southern California vistas:
"Late afternoon sunlight spilled over the mountains to the west. The light had a tarnished elegiac quality, as if the sinking sun might never rise again. On the fairway behind the house the golfers seemed to be hurrying, pursued by their lengthening shadows."The story is captivating almost to the very end, but then it suddenly breaks and disappoints in a major plot twist. The convoluted plot is like a clock spring that has been wound too tight. One turn too many and… Snap! Everything breaks apart to leave the clockwork gaping.
The references to repressed memories of one of the characters sound silly, yet, after all, this was written in 1967 and the New Age shtick is understandable. By the way, Archer notices graffiti saying MAKE SENSE NOT WAR, a nice Sixties twist.
And one more lovely Macdonald quote:
”Cases break in different ways. This case was opening, not like a door or even a grave, certainly not like a rose or any flower, but opening like an old sad blonde with darkness at her core.”Three and three quarter stars.
Read
June 27, 2018Ross MacDonald just gets better and better.
August 2, 2009
Stands with the best Macdonald I've so far read. A plot like a double Windsor knot, and the great good sense to focus on it rather than florid metaphors and "wild" characters. Which is not to say that florid metaphors and "wild" characters aren't great, but when you've got something this complex to put across to the reader, you can lose it by tying yourself up with them and letting them get underfoot. Of course, you could just admit to yourself that they don't matter, and lose track of them altogether like Chandler, but Macdonald isn't, and doesn't. Everyone makes their curtain call here, everything's significant. Pay attention.
June 2, 2011
Man, I need to catch up on my Lew Archer books. After Moving Target and then this, I kind of wish I discovered him when he was alive so that I can look forward him writing more books. I see that there are comments about how this is another Lew Archer formula, where he starts digging around and unearths a crazy complex mystery. Even if such a formula is accurate, Macdonald executes it extremely well. There's a sense of craft to how Archer (and the reader) peel away layers beneath what looks like a typical runaway-daughter case into a grand tale full of family secrets and lies. Now I just need to figure out which Lew Archer book to grab next.
August 3, 2023
Another intricate family web woven by Macdonald.
Changed and mistaken identities abound.
At this stage of Lew Archer's literary history, plot and narrative have a professional tightness.
Sometimes maybe at the cost of the bruised and affecting emotions of earlier works such as The Doomsters.
If I really have any knock against this one, it's the conservative and slightly naive description of drug use in the late 60's setting.
Changed and mistaken identities abound.
At this stage of Lew Archer's literary history, plot and narrative have a professional tightness.
Sometimes maybe at the cost of the bruised and affecting emotions of earlier works such as The Doomsters.
If I really have any knock against this one, it's the conservative and slightly naive description of drug use in the late 60's setting.
June 30, 2015
A faulknerian family saga, a bit too complex to be as rich or as emotionally taut as were the Chill or Black Money, but a page turner --
Read
October 4, 2018Not top-tier Macdonald/Lew Archer, but second-tier is still good. Baroque plot (tangled even by Macdonald standards) and usual Lew Archer themes (damaged kids, selfish parents.).
May 21, 2013
What can go wrong with a simple missing persons case? Another book of the Lew Archer's series.
December 19, 2018
Don't sit around and brood about the past.
Don't hit people.
Don't get mad and be an instant enemy.
With The Instant Enemy, Lew Archer finds himself in 1968, the most violent year in American history since the Civil War, and for the first time smack-dab in the center of Didion-country. The dreamers of the golden dream this time are a young teenage couple -- an idealistic girl and a schizoid boy with a dark past and two rebellious fists -- who run away and find themselves behind the convoluted kidnapping of a local industrialist. On their heels is Archer, walking lost among the disaffected, the dropouts, and the paranoids of the post-mythical counterculture of southern California. As always, everyone has two faces, and the deeper that they all dig themselves in the muck of their violence, the closer they come to the dark secrets that were buried there years before.
The plot is dauntingly complex at times, perhaps reaching again the heights of The Chill in terms of secret identities, sprawling family webs and sudden double crossings, but Macdonald keeps the mystery grounded in a bedrock of psychological stability. And for a 60s crime writer, Macdonald is conspicuously absent of the whole Jack Webb-style sneer at all these kids with their LSD and their rock'n'roll; perhaps this is because the idea of the wayward youth has always been a feature of Macdonald's writing, and finds itself brought to the fore most powerfully in the sunny psychosis of the counterculture.
I have a fanatical opinion that all seven Lew Archer novels published in the 1960s can be counted as among the greatest detective novels ever. We always think of the private eye as being stuck timelessly in the fog and the neon of 1940s Los Angeles, but I think that the almost-perfect Archer novels of the 1960s only go to show that perhaps it was then that was most indicative of the myth of the detective; people get lost in the haze of the golden land, and try desperately to find themselves again. And isn't that what detectives are hired to do?
Don't hit people.
Don't get mad and be an instant enemy.
With The Instant Enemy, Lew Archer finds himself in 1968, the most violent year in American history since the Civil War, and for the first time smack-dab in the center of Didion-country. The dreamers of the golden dream this time are a young teenage couple -- an idealistic girl and a schizoid boy with a dark past and two rebellious fists -- who run away and find themselves behind the convoluted kidnapping of a local industrialist. On their heels is Archer, walking lost among the disaffected, the dropouts, and the paranoids of the post-mythical counterculture of southern California. As always, everyone has two faces, and the deeper that they all dig themselves in the muck of their violence, the closer they come to the dark secrets that were buried there years before.
The plot is dauntingly complex at times, perhaps reaching again the heights of The Chill in terms of secret identities, sprawling family webs and sudden double crossings, but Macdonald keeps the mystery grounded in a bedrock of psychological stability. And for a 60s crime writer, Macdonald is conspicuously absent of the whole Jack Webb-style sneer at all these kids with their LSD and their rock'n'roll; perhaps this is because the idea of the wayward youth has always been a feature of Macdonald's writing, and finds itself brought to the fore most powerfully in the sunny psychosis of the counterculture.
I have a fanatical opinion that all seven Lew Archer novels published in the 1960s can be counted as among the greatest detective novels ever. We always think of the private eye as being stuck timelessly in the fog and the neon of 1940s Los Angeles, but I think that the almost-perfect Archer novels of the 1960s only go to show that perhaps it was then that was most indicative of the myth of the detective; people get lost in the haze of the golden land, and try desperately to find themselves again. And isn't that what detectives are hired to do?
November 30, 2024
Trojrecenze na tři různé knihy jednoho autora.
Ono problém s Macdonaldem je, že jeho detektivky jsou si hodně podobné a téměř zaměnitelné – všechny navíc spíš pozvolné, poklidné, vtažené do sebe. Hlavní hrdina, detektiv Lew Archer, je tu spíš jen takovou empatickou mlhovinou bez větší osobnosti, čistě průvodcem světem psychických poruch a rodinných trablů. Tomu odpovídá i to, že místo hlášek a stíraček jen v duchu komentuje, co se asi lidem, se kterými mluví, honí hlavou, co cítí. Je to víc poetické než vtipné, melancholické a suše emocionální… čili nic moc pro mě. Ale víc to budeme rozbírat v prosincové Rudé žni (nebo jsme rozebírali, podle toho, kdy to čtete), i odkud tohle všechno pochází.
Tyhle kriminálky mají naprosté minimum akce a vlastně ani konfliktů a vyhrocených scén… i ty mrtvoly jsou dost často nalezené někde mimo záběr. Stojí to na čistě tom, že hrdina navštěvuje postavy – obvykle v nějakou děsnou noční hodinu – a všichni, hlavně ženy, jsou na pokraji opilosti a nervového zhroucení. Na rozdíl od Chandlera, Macdonald tlumí nejen vtip, ale i emoce, takže ani na konci nepřichází žádná ťafka, která by vás srazila do kolen. Jen občas úvaha „vážně? Vážně by tahle finta měla projít?“ (To se týká hlavně Honby za Phoebe.)
Macdonaldovy knížky jsou spíše delší a je nutné přebírat zrnka jeho textu, aby člověk našel nějakou zajímavou větu či scénu, a ani zápletky nejsou nejpestřejší. V Honbě za Phoebe se hledá zmizelá dcera, v Bíle pruhovaném pohřebním voze (super název, ale to auto tam hraje minimální roli) se hledá zmizelá dcera a v Osudovém nepříteli se hledá, hádejte co, ano zmizelá dcera. Ve dvou případech je tu přítel, kterého rodiče neschvalují a samozřejmě, různá břemena minulosti. Macdonaldovy romány jsou spíš vnitřní terapie (ano, zmizela mu dcera) a jsou psané možná víc pro něj než pro čtenáře.
Ono problém s Macdonaldem je, že jeho detektivky jsou si hodně podobné a téměř zaměnitelné – všechny navíc spíš pozvolné, poklidné, vtažené do sebe. Hlavní hrdina, detektiv Lew Archer, je tu spíš jen takovou empatickou mlhovinou bez větší osobnosti, čistě průvodcem světem psychických poruch a rodinných trablů. Tomu odpovídá i to, že místo hlášek a stíraček jen v duchu komentuje, co se asi lidem, se kterými mluví, honí hlavou, co cítí. Je to víc poetické než vtipné, melancholické a suše emocionální… čili nic moc pro mě. Ale víc to budeme rozbírat v prosincové Rudé žni (nebo jsme rozebírali, podle toho, kdy to čtete), i odkud tohle všechno pochází.
Tyhle kriminálky mají naprosté minimum akce a vlastně ani konfliktů a vyhrocených scén… i ty mrtvoly jsou dost často nalezené někde mimo záběr. Stojí to na čistě tom, že hrdina navštěvuje postavy – obvykle v nějakou děsnou noční hodinu – a všichni, hlavně ženy, jsou na pokraji opilosti a nervového zhroucení. Na rozdíl od Chandlera, Macdonald tlumí nejen vtip, ale i emoce, takže ani na konci nepřichází žádná ťafka, která by vás srazila do kolen. Jen občas úvaha „vážně? Vážně by tahle finta měla projít?“ (To se týká hlavně Honby za Phoebe.)
Macdonaldovy knížky jsou spíše delší a je nutné přebírat zrnka jeho textu, aby člověk našel nějakou zajímavou větu či scénu, a ani zápletky nejsou nejpestřejší. V Honbě za Phoebe se hledá zmizelá dcera, v Bíle pruhovaném pohřebním voze (super název, ale to auto tam hraje minimální roli) se hledá zmizelá dcera a v Osudovém nepříteli se hledá, hádejte co, ano zmizelá dcera. Ve dvou případech je tu přítel, kterého rodiče neschvalují a samozřejmě, různá břemena minulosti. Macdonaldovy romány jsou spíš vnitřní terapie (ano, zmizela mu dcera) a jsou psané možná víc pro něj než pro čtenáře.
April 14, 2021
Exactly what it says on the tin. Archer is hired by a worried father to track down his runaway 17-year-old daughter, last seen in the company of a 19-year-old juvenile delinquent with a criminal record. Archer actually finds the two fairly quickly - within the first few chapters - but is hard pressed to get the girl to return to her family, especially after a violent encounter with the boyfriend. Matters only get worse when the two teens kidnap a local millionaire, but it's not for ransom. The girl runs away from the boy when she realizes that he wants to kill their captive, and now it's a race against time to find the men before anyone is seriously hurt. Also lurking in the background is a sketchy retired sheriff's deputy, who's tracking the kid for his own mysterious purposes, and may have left a trail of bodies in his own wake.
As always, this is a nicely paced, twisty story that draws us deep into a web of intrigue and family secrets. It's starting to get annoying that Archer's principals never want to tell him the whole story; this time they're basically repressed Puritans who shudder to even think about the word sex, much less its implications; however, it was obvious from the start that the missing daughter had been traumatized in some way, most likely by the man she helped kidnap; too bad this man is her father's employer, thus making the father reticent to say anything negative for fear of losing his job.
There was one twist too many in the end , but otherwise, this is a decent entry into the series.
As always, this is a nicely paced, twisty story that draws us deep into a web of intrigue and family secrets. It's starting to get annoying that Archer's principals never want to tell him the whole story; this time they're basically repressed Puritans who shudder to even think about the word sex, much less its implications; however, it was obvious from the start that the missing daughter had been traumatized in some way, most likely by the man she helped kidnap; too bad this man is her father's employer, thus making the father reticent to say anything negative for fear of losing his job.
There was one twist too many in the end , but otherwise, this is a decent entry into the series.
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