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Lew Archer #17
Sleeping Beauty
The Lew Archer Novel "Sleeping Beauty". Written by Ross Macdonald..Knopf Publishers...a Borzoi Book...BCE...Gray linen looking book boards have gilded lettering on binding. Author's initials are backstamped in the front cover. Dust jacket in great condition....shows minor scuffs on the edges.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1973
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October 2, 2025
“I tried to move like a neutral in the no man’s land between the lawless and the law. But when the shooting started I generally knew which side I belonged on.”
Archer is on his way back from Mazatlán to Pacific Point, California, when he sees the oil spill that will play a part in the complex unraveling of old sins coming to bear on the present. Some of Macdonald’s descriptions, as seen through Archer’s eyes from the air as his plane comes in, are wonderful, capturing the terrible price paid by nature when men are careless, and care only about money:
“An offshore oil platform stood up out of its windward end like the metal handle of a dagger that had stabbed the world and made it spill black blood.”
Archer as narrator talks about Pacific Point being one of his favorite places on the California coast, because of its beauty. Then once he’s on the ground there’s this:
“From the hill above the harbor I could see the enormous slick spreading like premature night across the sea.”
Moments later, in a walk along the damaged beach, Archer happens upon the girl in the case. Laurel Russo is trying to save a bird covered in oil. Her grief and pain at the bird’s plight tells Archer that she’s in emotional trouble which goes far beyond the bird’s. He takes her back with him to his apartment, and after a phone call to her estranged husband, Tom, a pharmacist, she bolts. Archer quickly discovers she’s taken from his medicine cabinet a bottle of sleeping tablets, and is alarmed because of her fragile state.
Thus begins his desperate search for the girl. He’s seen two men at a restaurant that he notes early on, and they will come into play at a certain point. One of them will, in fact, wash ashore on the morning after Archer has a brief liaison with Elizabeth. She is tied to the Somerville and Lennox clans, who are responsible for the black blood creeping toward shore. They may also be responsible for some real blood spilled on an escort carrier headed for Okinawa, and in a bedroom where a child remained alone for days after the murder of its mother. There is a ransom note, and a kidnapping which might be very real, or might be faked. That unknown leads Archer to be less than forthcoming with the authorities, because his main priority is Laurel.
I recalled this as my favorite among Ross Macdonald’s literate Lew Archer novels. The Lew Archer novels were a means to an end for Macdonald, who used the form to spotlight broken and damaged people in peril, and in need of mending. After revisiting the narrative, I find it to be the zenith of what he tried to do with the detective form, which as he once noted, gave him all the rope he’d ever need. Just how good Sleeping Beauty is, and how the author felt about it, might be indicated by his dedicating the book to Eudora Welty, with whom he had a sort of 84 Charing Cross Road type of relationship. Sleeping Beauty is literate yet full of movement as the search for Laurel in the present begins spiraling backward toward the past. It is a labyrinth, the entanglement of one family’s affairs and the damage it has strewn across both the physical landscape and the emotional one.
One of the things which strikes the reader is how unpleasant most of the people Archer encounters seem to be. Archer occasionally bites back, but has to stop short so that he can find out what he needs to know to find Laurel. There seems to be little warmth or tenderness among most of the family. When they speak, their words have an edge of nastiness or dismissal you often encounter in those who’ve either gotten their way for too long because of money and bluster, or have never gotten their way because they were the recipients of the bluster, but not the money. The more Archer talks to those around Laurel, the more it becomes evident that something is being hidden:
“The dim air of the place oppressed me. I felt as if I was lost in the catacombs under a city where no one could be trusted or believed.”
That mistrust includes Elizabeth, with whom Archer shares a tender moment, only to discover that’s all it was:
“I couldn’t tell if she was a hard woman who had moments of softness, or a soft woman who could be hard on occasion.”
The men fare even worse, either unpleasant and obstinate, or deeply troubled, like Laurel’s husband, Tom, who may be as messed up as his young wife. Archer walks in on him having a dream, and it confirms that some past trauma is the catalyst for what’s happening now. Why Archer even cares, beyond his sense of responsibility over the bottle of sleeping pills, is explained in something Laurel has written on the back of a heartfelt letter from her husband, Tom:
“I get these terrible depressions and then I don’t want to live in the world at all. Not even with you. But I’m fighting it.”
It is this letter, and Laurel’s response, which creates sympathy for the couple, and Laurel especially. Macdonald wisely gives it to the reader about a quarter way into the story, so we’ll care as much as Archer. Up to that point, the people are so insufferable we almost want Archer to start slapping them around. It helps draw the reader in, and explains why Archer puts up with them. He needs them, so he can keep pushing them, and get at the truth so that he can give the couple damaged by their respective families a chance.
The ending is quiet yet powerful, softly and sadly reverberating back through the narrative, as was Macdonald’s intent. Sleeping Beauty is a wonderful piece of writing, and I’m still of the opinion that this is his most successful novel in terms of what he was attempting to do. It would certainly explain him dedicating Sleeping Beauty to Eudora Welty. On a technical note, it has at least a couple of typos which don’t affect the reading — although one of them makes a sentence confusing for a moment. Every book has them, even the great ones, famous ones from big publishing houses; anyone who tells you different is blowing wind up your skirt. It's not a big deal here, doesn't mar anything.
This is a terrific, literate novel which just happens to be a mystery story featuring a detective. That’s probably the best way to describe all of Macdonald’s later novels, once he’d moved sideways from Chandler. I don’t quite agree with Anthony Boucher, who suggested in the New York Times that Macdonald was a better novelist than Chandler and Hammett ever were, because it really is apples and oranges. I think Eudora Welty came much closer to pinning down the difference in styles, so I’ll allow her words to punctuate my review of Sleeping Beauty:
“A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were.”
Archer is on his way back from Mazatlán to Pacific Point, California, when he sees the oil spill that will play a part in the complex unraveling of old sins coming to bear on the present. Some of Macdonald’s descriptions, as seen through Archer’s eyes from the air as his plane comes in, are wonderful, capturing the terrible price paid by nature when men are careless, and care only about money:
“An offshore oil platform stood up out of its windward end like the metal handle of a dagger that had stabbed the world and made it spill black blood.”
Archer as narrator talks about Pacific Point being one of his favorite places on the California coast, because of its beauty. Then once he’s on the ground there’s this:
“From the hill above the harbor I could see the enormous slick spreading like premature night across the sea.”
Moments later, in a walk along the damaged beach, Archer happens upon the girl in the case. Laurel Russo is trying to save a bird covered in oil. Her grief and pain at the bird’s plight tells Archer that she’s in emotional trouble which goes far beyond the bird’s. He takes her back with him to his apartment, and after a phone call to her estranged husband, Tom, a pharmacist, she bolts. Archer quickly discovers she’s taken from his medicine cabinet a bottle of sleeping tablets, and is alarmed because of her fragile state.
Thus begins his desperate search for the girl. He’s seen two men at a restaurant that he notes early on, and they will come into play at a certain point. One of them will, in fact, wash ashore on the morning after Archer has a brief liaison with Elizabeth. She is tied to the Somerville and Lennox clans, who are responsible for the black blood creeping toward shore. They may also be responsible for some real blood spilled on an escort carrier headed for Okinawa, and in a bedroom where a child remained alone for days after the murder of its mother. There is a ransom note, and a kidnapping which might be very real, or might be faked. That unknown leads Archer to be less than forthcoming with the authorities, because his main priority is Laurel.
I recalled this as my favorite among Ross Macdonald’s literate Lew Archer novels. The Lew Archer novels were a means to an end for Macdonald, who used the form to spotlight broken and damaged people in peril, and in need of mending. After revisiting the narrative, I find it to be the zenith of what he tried to do with the detective form, which as he once noted, gave him all the rope he’d ever need. Just how good Sleeping Beauty is, and how the author felt about it, might be indicated by his dedicating the book to Eudora Welty, with whom he had a sort of 84 Charing Cross Road type of relationship. Sleeping Beauty is literate yet full of movement as the search for Laurel in the present begins spiraling backward toward the past. It is a labyrinth, the entanglement of one family’s affairs and the damage it has strewn across both the physical landscape and the emotional one.
One of the things which strikes the reader is how unpleasant most of the people Archer encounters seem to be. Archer occasionally bites back, but has to stop short so that he can find out what he needs to know to find Laurel. There seems to be little warmth or tenderness among most of the family. When they speak, their words have an edge of nastiness or dismissal you often encounter in those who’ve either gotten their way for too long because of money and bluster, or have never gotten their way because they were the recipients of the bluster, but not the money. The more Archer talks to those around Laurel, the more it becomes evident that something is being hidden:
“The dim air of the place oppressed me. I felt as if I was lost in the catacombs under a city where no one could be trusted or believed.”
That mistrust includes Elizabeth, with whom Archer shares a tender moment, only to discover that’s all it was:
“I couldn’t tell if she was a hard woman who had moments of softness, or a soft woman who could be hard on occasion.”
The men fare even worse, either unpleasant and obstinate, or deeply troubled, like Laurel’s husband, Tom, who may be as messed up as his young wife. Archer walks in on him having a dream, and it confirms that some past trauma is the catalyst for what’s happening now. Why Archer even cares, beyond his sense of responsibility over the bottle of sleeping pills, is explained in something Laurel has written on the back of a heartfelt letter from her husband, Tom:
“I get these terrible depressions and then I don’t want to live in the world at all. Not even with you. But I’m fighting it.”
It is this letter, and Laurel’s response, which creates sympathy for the couple, and Laurel especially. Macdonald wisely gives it to the reader about a quarter way into the story, so we’ll care as much as Archer. Up to that point, the people are so insufferable we almost want Archer to start slapping them around. It helps draw the reader in, and explains why Archer puts up with them. He needs them, so he can keep pushing them, and get at the truth so that he can give the couple damaged by their respective families a chance.
The ending is quiet yet powerful, softly and sadly reverberating back through the narrative, as was Macdonald’s intent. Sleeping Beauty is a wonderful piece of writing, and I’m still of the opinion that this is his most successful novel in terms of what he was attempting to do. It would certainly explain him dedicating Sleeping Beauty to Eudora Welty. On a technical note, it has at least a couple of typos which don’t affect the reading — although one of them makes a sentence confusing for a moment. Every book has them, even the great ones, famous ones from big publishing houses; anyone who tells you different is blowing wind up your skirt. It's not a big deal here, doesn't mar anything.
This is a terrific, literate novel which just happens to be a mystery story featuring a detective. That’s probably the best way to describe all of Macdonald’s later novels, once he’d moved sideways from Chandler. I don’t quite agree with Anthony Boucher, who suggested in the New York Times that Macdonald was a better novelist than Chandler and Hammett ever were, because it really is apples and oranges. I think Eudora Welty came much closer to pinning down the difference in styles, so I’ll allow her words to punctuate my review of Sleeping Beauty:
“A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were.”
October 12, 2019
I bury myself the best I can in old books, but somehow my old books keep dragging me back to the latest "breaking news". Take this one, for example, inspired by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Ten days after I finished re-reading it, I turned on the TV to discover the Santa Barbara beaches once more mired in oil, its seabirds blackened and endangered. Sure, it's nice to be reminded of old books I like, but this kind of deja vu I don't need.
For years I recalled Sleeping Beauty as one of Macdonald's finest novels, principally for the way he combined the oil spill theme with the sudden disappearance of a possibly suicidal woman. Her family is in the oil business, and when detective Lew Archer first meets her, she is on the beach, trying to rescue a dying, oil-soaked grebe. "A handsome young woman,” Archer describes her, “with eyes as angry as the bird's." Within the novels first few pages, the central Macdonald themes of turbulent nature, family greed, and the haunted young are combined in one inspired metaphor.
Unfortunately, what I failed to remember is that this metaphor does not remain central to the plot, which soon becomes an extraordinarily complicated collection of protective camouflage and weary masks worn by a large cast of characters, some hiding petty, and some great crimes.
Don't get me wrong. This is an effective, well-constructed novel, written in elegant prose. It just wasn't the great novel I had held in memory, the novel I hoped it would once again be.
June 21, 2024
Family secrets, the secrets of the past tend to come out when the sharp-eyed, big-hearted and lonely Lew Archer gets down to work.
March 23, 2016
Those old Archer – I’m sorry, ‘Harper’ – movies are a curious pair. The first is your standard, shiny Sixties thriller with lots of good looking people involved in a vastly complicated plot, whilst the other is very much grungy Seventies and actually quite dull. In both, Paul Newman does little more than a schoolboy detective impression. The reason I bring them up is that ‘Sleeping Beauty’ – this volume of Archer’s adventures – has a tremendously visual opening, where our cipher-like detective flies over and then visits one of his favourite beauty spots, which is now being spoilt by a huge oil leak. The contrast of golden beaches, threatened by this pumping black menace coming out of the once clear blue sea, is incredibly well done. It (and the complex case which follows it) deserves to be realised on film, and I’m amazed that it didn’t occur to any eco-minded film producer as The Gulf of Mexico disaster took place last year.
Lew Archer once again travels through deceptions and age-old family secrets, as a young woman’s disappearance gradually becomes a kidnapping, before turning into a couple of murders. MacDonald writes scenes which have a real crackle, there’s a great rhythm to his interrogations and a nice eye for detail that stops them becoming repetitive. The case in question is twisty as hell (one of the writers it actually brought to mind was Christie, in the way that everyone is given a motivation to have done it, or at least be part of it), but the denouement manages to be satisfyingly surprising.
So come on then Hollywood money-men: any actor portraying a Phillip Marlowe these days would have to face the near impossible touch of matching Humphrey Bogart; while anyone playing Lew Archer only has to beat Paul Newman pretending to be Humphrey Bogart – and surely that’s possible.
Lew Archer once again travels through deceptions and age-old family secrets, as a young woman’s disappearance gradually becomes a kidnapping, before turning into a couple of murders. MacDonald writes scenes which have a real crackle, there’s a great rhythm to his interrogations and a nice eye for detail that stops them becoming repetitive. The case in question is twisty as hell (one of the writers it actually brought to mind was Christie, in the way that everyone is given a motivation to have done it, or at least be part of it), but the denouement manages to be satisfyingly surprising.
So come on then Hollywood money-men: any actor portraying a Phillip Marlowe these days would have to face the near impossible touch of matching Humphrey Bogart; while anyone playing Lew Archer only has to beat Paul Newman pretending to be Humphrey Bogart – and surely that’s possible.
January 11, 2025
این کتاب رو خیلی شانسی توی یه قرعه کشی برنده شدم و تو قفسه ها مونده بود تا برم سراغش. اول که شروع کردم به خوندن فکر کردم یه ماجرای ساده است و میشه حدس زد چجوری قراره پیش بره ولی هرچقدر بیشتر جلو رفتم ماجرا بیشتر گره خورد و پیچیده تر و شد و اعتراف می کنم تا تهش که رسیدم هنوز نفهمیده بودم گره همه ماجراها به کی قراره ختم بشه. وسطاش گاهی فکر کردم چقدر ساده انگار، مگه میشه همچین چیزی؟ بعد که چند فصل گذشت دیدم که نه بابا اون چیزی که فکر می کردم نبوده و گویا نویسنده هم فکر مخاطب رو در طول داستان می خونده :))) خلاصه چقد همه چی پیچیده شد :)
هم ازین لحاظ برام جالب بود که پیچشهای داستانی به جایی داشت و هم ازین لحاظ که برخلاف تصور اولیه ام_ که قراره با داستانهایی مثل داستانهای چندلر و همت رو به رو بشم _ با کارآگاهی رو به رو شدم که هرچند ظاهرا یاداور کاراکتر ادبیات نوآر بود ولی تفاوتهای عمیقی داشت. علاوه بر این، زنهای داستان همگی قربانی جامعه مردسالار بودند، هرکدوم به یه شکلی آسیب دیده بودند یا در معرض آسیب دیدن بودند. هیچ خبری از کاراکترهای زنی مثل کت وومن و پویزن آیوی تو ماجراهای نوآر بتمن که مشهورترین زنهای خارج شده از سنت، فریبنده و فریبکار در متن شهری تیره تار (مثل گاتهام سیتی) نبود. ماجرای اصلی حول فساد ، گذشته و پنهانکاری یکی از خانواده های ثروتمند امریکایی می چرخید، خیلی کم به پس لرزه های سیاسی و اجتماعی پرداخت، با وجود اینکه نشت نفت می تونست بهونه خوبی باشه برای کشوندن مسئله به یک ماجرای بزرگتر سیاسی. پلیس دولتی نقش کمرنگی داشت، و حتی برخلاف نوآر به فساد افسرهای پلیس پرداخته نشده بود.
اما داستان بسیار سرگرم کننده ای بود و شما رو تا ته با خودش می کشید. ترجمه، می تونست بهتر باشه، اشکالات ویراستاری، نه زیاد، ولی وجود داشت.
اینکه چرا از چنین ماجرای سرگرم کننده ای فیلمی ساخته نشده برام هنوز جای سوال داره و شاید بدترین نکته در رابطه با کتاب ترجمه شده، طرح جلد کاملا بی ربطشه. چرا باید نمایی از فیلم روانی هیچکاک روی جلد باشه در حالی که فضای داستان و نکات برجسته طرح داستان با طرح داستانی روانی کاملا متفاوته؟
هم ازین لحاظ برام جالب بود که پیچشهای داستانی به جایی داشت و هم ازین لحاظ که برخلاف تصور اولیه ام_ که قراره با داستانهایی مثل داستانهای چندلر و همت رو به رو بشم _ با کارآگاهی رو به رو شدم که هرچند ظاهرا یاداور کاراکتر ادبیات نوآر بود ولی تفاوتهای عمیقی داشت. علاوه بر این، زنهای داستان همگی قربانی جامعه مردسالار بودند، هرکدوم به یه شکلی آسیب دیده بودند یا در معرض آسیب دیدن بودند. هیچ خبری از کاراکترهای زنی مثل کت وومن و پویزن آیوی تو ماجراهای نوآر بتمن که مشهورترین زنهای خارج شده از سنت، فریبنده و فریبکار در متن شهری تیره تار (مثل گاتهام سیتی) نبود. ماجرای اصلی حول فساد ، گذشته و پنهانکاری یکی از خانواده های ثروتمند امریکایی می چرخید، خیلی کم به پس لرزه های سیاسی و اجتماعی پرداخت، با وجود اینکه نشت نفت می تونست بهونه خوبی باشه برای کشوندن مسئله به یک ماجرای بزرگتر سیاسی. پلیس دولتی نقش کمرنگی داشت، و حتی برخلاف نوآر به فساد افسرهای پلیس پرداخته نشده بود.
اما داستان بسیار سرگرم کننده ای بود و شما رو تا ته با خودش می کشید. ترجمه، می تونست بهتر باشه، اشکالات ویراستاری، نه زیاد، ولی وجود داشت.
اینکه چرا از چنین ماجرای سرگرم کننده ای فیلمی ساخته نشده برام هنوز جای سوال داره و شاید بدترین نکته در رابطه با کتاب ترجمه شده، طرح جلد کاملا بی ربطشه. چرا باید نمایی از فیلم روانی هیچکاک روی جلد باشه در حالی که فضای داستان و نکات برجسته طرح داستان با طرح داستانی روانی کاملا متفاوته؟
March 31, 2017
A massive oil spill that brings the bodies of the recently murdered to shore, a possibly suicidal wife who goes missing with a bottle of sleeping pills, a rundown motel ran by a rundown woman, the memory of a mysterious fire which sunk a WW2 battleship and left its survivors both physically and psychologically scarred, a young thug with a gun and a get-rich scheme, a gold digger with a horsewhip, a maze of failed and phony marriages, 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.
February 22, 2024
From 1973
With the background of an oil spill off California's coast and birds alive and dead. (Ross/Kenneth loved birds and always mentions them), there is a family mystery of gothic horror involving the oil spillers themselves. This is a very full and detailed story evoking, to me, his best works (The Galton Case, The Zebra Striped Hearse and The Chill). It is the penultimate Lew Archer, and I'd never read it before.
With the background of an oil spill off California's coast and birds alive and dead. (Ross/Kenneth loved birds and always mentions them), there is a family mystery of gothic horror involving the oil spillers themselves. This is a very full and detailed story evoking, to me, his best works (The Galton Case, The Zebra Striped Hearse and The Chill). It is the penultimate Lew Archer, and I'd never read it before.
October 30, 2021
One of the lesser Macdonald “Archer” novels. For me at least.
Too many suspects and the murderer is inadvertently revealed by the first half.
Of course I loved it regardless.
How else could I come this far into the series & not love it?
I just hated the prominent Lennox family & their malignant hold on everyone associated with this “missing person” case.
Lots of distended threads… that lead nowhere some of which are rethreaded & form a kind of half ass net to catch the psychically wounded but nobody really survives this emotionally brutal novel.
Macdonald’s cruelest resolution.
Recommended only if you’ve read the 1st sixteen previous novels in the series.
By this entry Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald had suffered too long the miseries inflicted upon his own soul and was blaming himself for it all.
Too many suspects and the murderer is inadvertently revealed by the first half.
Of course I loved it regardless.
How else could I come this far into the series & not love it?
I just hated the prominent Lennox family & their malignant hold on everyone associated with this “missing person” case.
Lots of distended threads… that lead nowhere some of which are rethreaded & form a kind of half ass net to catch the psychically wounded but nobody really survives this emotionally brutal novel.
Macdonald’s cruelest resolution.
Recommended only if you’ve read the 1st sixteen previous novels in the series.
By this entry Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald had suffered too long the miseries inflicted upon his own soul and was blaming himself for it all.
March 7, 2020
I'm not the hugest fan of noir, but there is something about the mid-century hardboiled mysteries set in L.A. that is just so evocative. It's a place I've never been, but that I recognize from dozens (hundreds) of depictions in book and film, to which Harry Bosch is the rightful heir. In my imagination, I've been there before and I've seen it all, just as world weary as any of the heroes (anti-heroes) of any of these books.
I was completely underwhelmed by The Thin Man, when I read it as a Halloween bingo group read. But, I've read some Chandler, and liked it pretty well, and Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black blew my mind - in a good way. So, maybe I am a bigger fan than I can really recognize.
Because I really enjoyed this book. Taking a real oil spill from 1969 as the jumping off point, this is a complicated tale of greed and murder, with complex roots in a different disaster years before. The characters are California archetypes - the aging patriarch (with a much younger companion), disappointed in his children, the adult children who have never quite managed the dizzying levels of success that their father achieved, and who are slowly but inexorably dissipating the family fortune, the little-girl-lost granddaughter who married beneath her, and whose sadness makes her only more beautiful. It's all sort of annoying, but also there's a reason that these are archetypes.
And isn't it fascinating that we've been having these same environmental conflicts for 50 years, and still, always, industry prevails. America is open for business (and for plunder). Privatize profits, socialize losses, and let no man get in the way of the wealthy extracting maximum wealth from the resources that should, by right, belong to us all.
OK, that took a turn. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
I couldn't get a fix on Archer, so I'm obviously going to have to read more.
I was completely underwhelmed by The Thin Man, when I read it as a Halloween bingo group read. But, I've read some Chandler, and liked it pretty well, and Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black blew my mind - in a good way. So, maybe I am a bigger fan than I can really recognize.
Because I really enjoyed this book. Taking a real oil spill from 1969 as the jumping off point, this is a complicated tale of greed and murder, with complex roots in a different disaster years before. The characters are California archetypes - the aging patriarch (with a much younger companion), disappointed in his children, the adult children who have never quite managed the dizzying levels of success that their father achieved, and who are slowly but inexorably dissipating the family fortune, the little-girl-lost granddaughter who married beneath her, and whose sadness makes her only more beautiful. It's all sort of annoying, but also there's a reason that these are archetypes.
And isn't it fascinating that we've been having these same environmental conflicts for 50 years, and still, always, industry prevails. America is open for business (and for plunder). Privatize profits, socialize losses, and let no man get in the way of the wealthy extracting maximum wealth from the resources that should, by right, belong to us all.
OK, that took a turn. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
I couldn't get a fix on Archer, so I'm obviously going to have to read more.
October 25, 2015
In the long run, Macdonald's reputation will rest on his late novels -- though many readers probably will never get this far. It's a pity.
This book, Macdonald's penultimate, is flawless. For most of the novel, Archer is operating in his increasingly familiar role of 'therapist with a P.I. license'. But in the meantime, Macdonald has been weaving what ultimtely turns out to be one of his best and tightest mystery plots. The writing, plotting, and character handling are all superb.
This book, Macdonald's penultimate, is flawless. For most of the novel, Archer is operating in his increasingly familiar role of 'therapist with a P.I. license'. But in the meantime, Macdonald has been weaving what ultimtely turns out to be one of his best and tightest mystery plots. The writing, plotting, and character handling are all superb.
August 22, 2023
"Why didn't they take the right preventive measures?"
"It costs money," he said. "Oilmen are gamblers, most of them, and they'd rather take a little chance than spend a lot of money. Or wait for technology to catch up." He added after a moment, "They're not the only gamblers. We're all in the game. We all drive cars, and we're all hooked on oil. The question is how we can get unhooked before we drown in the stuff."
I nodded in agreement and started to move away toward my car.
"It costs money," he said. "Oilmen are gamblers, most of them, and they'd rather take a little chance than spend a lot of money. Or wait for technology to catch up." He added after a moment, "They're not the only gamblers. We're all in the game. We all drive cars, and we're all hooked on oil. The question is how we can get unhooked before we drown in the stuff."
I nodded in agreement and started to move away toward my car.
September 29, 2020
At first I thought this was going to be different than the dozen or so other Lew Archer mysteries I have read, as it started out around an oil spill and meeting a woman who trying to save an oil soaked bird. She went missing and Archer ended up working for her husband at a reduced rate. Usually the novels start out working for a rich person. Turns out the missing woman is from a rich family and then we are quickly into the ingredients of the other novels: divorced parents involved, man crazy about his girl, relatives involved from both sides, some loopy character in the background, hospitals, doctors, motels, vets from the same WWII battle action, a murder in the past is tied to a murder in the present, and the detective getting clobbered. Page 19 had a list of major characters; I referred to it often. For all that familiarity and array of close knit characters the plot is sufficiently different to being kept intrigued and guessing what the conclusion will be. In the other books it usually comes down to three possibilities. This ending was unsettling. Similar ingredients different outcome.
July 29, 2024
All 18 of the Lew Archer novels are very good and well worth a look. Reading them through in order (as I've been) the similarities appear. One or more murders, Archer gets pulled into the case but his job usually hangs by a thread, he follows a lead to one person and then a next and a next as he drives all around Southern California or the western U.S. (sometimes he flies). Gradually a picture appears of a long past and hidden event that has manifested in the present with mortal consequences. The unique nature of each Archer book appears in the psychological damage and dependencies between the characters: families, lovers, and strangers. Greed, lust, fear, decay, and disintegration face these characters, trying and failing to cope. In Sleeping Beauty Macdonald also laments the damage we wreak upon our planet as an oil slick threatens.
June 27, 2022
First of all, read Gene's GREAT review of this book (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). Gene is THE expert on all things Ross Macdonald here. I mostly agree with his opinion on this book... but I still liked it very, very much. Maybe it was the (now familiar, but still enjoyed by me) process of encountering a mystery and then digging deeper and deeper as it turns out to be WAAAY more complex than it was thought at first and also reaching back into the past (which is something I always enjoy in detective stories).
As for not sympathising with characters... I can see where this sentiment comes from and I think maybe the problem is that with some of the characters we spent only a scene or two (the family patriarch and his mistress, for example) and they do feel a bit wasted. Still, Ross Macdonald, as always, presents beautifully disfunctional marriages and families which is something that I, perhaps in a slightly masochistic way, always enjoyed. Or maybe I like reading about such things, because I'm pretty confident that my marriage is going strong? Ok, maybe I'll ease up on this self-psychoanalysis. Getting back to meritum, it was a bit surprising that Lew Archer kept saying that he liked the missing woman so much as they barely interacted and she didn't give him many reasons to like her - then again, he did think she was hot so... Though I did understand why he thought he was personally responsible for finding her and it was a welcome change that this started as his personal quest of sorts, instead of just another job.
Btw. did I mention how in those noir books everyone knows everyone?
And did I mention how I love a good noir?
As for not sympathising with characters... I can see where this sentiment comes from and I think maybe the problem is that with some of the characters we spent only a scene or two (the family patriarch and his mistress, for example) and they do feel a bit wasted. Still, Ross Macdonald, as always, presents beautifully disfunctional marriages and families which is something that I, perhaps in a slightly masochistic way, always enjoyed. Or maybe I like reading about such things, because I'm pretty confident that my marriage is going strong? Ok, maybe I'll ease up on this self-psychoanalysis. Getting back to meritum, it was a bit surprising that Lew Archer kept saying that he liked the missing woman so much as they barely interacted and she didn't give him many reasons to like her - then again, he did think she was hot so... Though I did understand why he thought he was personally responsible for finding her and it was a welcome change that this started as his personal quest of sorts, instead of just another job.
Btw. did I mention how in those noir books everyone knows everyone?
And did I mention how I love a good noir?
October 16, 2019
Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series is classic stuff in the great Southern California private eye genre, and I've liked several of the books. But I think his output was a little uneven, and I find some of his prose to be a little stilted. I think his ear failed him occasionally, particularly in the later books.
This one's from 1973, and it reflects the concerns of the age, with a massive oil spill off Los Angeles playing a central role. Archer stumbles into this case, coming across a young woman on the beach who is distraught over the disaster, trying in vain to save an oil-soaked bird. Archer takes her to his place, she does a bunk with a vial full of sleeping pills, and Archer goes looking for her. It turns out she is the disturbed granddaughter of the head of the oil company responsible for the spill, married beneath her station; she may or may not have been kidnapped by a suspicious character from her past whom Archer also happened to notice at the beach that evening, and a complicated history involving her own and her husband's family, going back to World War Two, may hold the key to her disappearance.
The setup is contrived and the denouement over-complicated, Archer has a random and not entirely convincing romantic hookup in the middle of it, and the prose is a bit strained in places: "He looked at me with eyes like the charred ends of memory." Huh?
Not Macdonald's best, but if you're a fan of the series you'll read it; it's got Lew Archer with his jaded integrity in the imperiled paradise of Southern California.
This one's from 1973, and it reflects the concerns of the age, with a massive oil spill off Los Angeles playing a central role. Archer stumbles into this case, coming across a young woman on the beach who is distraught over the disaster, trying in vain to save an oil-soaked bird. Archer takes her to his place, she does a bunk with a vial full of sleeping pills, and Archer goes looking for her. It turns out she is the disturbed granddaughter of the head of the oil company responsible for the spill, married beneath her station; she may or may not have been kidnapped by a suspicious character from her past whom Archer also happened to notice at the beach that evening, and a complicated history involving her own and her husband's family, going back to World War Two, may hold the key to her disappearance.
The setup is contrived and the denouement over-complicated, Archer has a random and not entirely convincing romantic hookup in the middle of it, and the prose is a bit strained in places: "He looked at me with eyes like the charred ends of memory." Huh?
Not Macdonald's best, but if you're a fan of the series you'll read it; it's got Lew Archer with his jaded integrity in the imperiled paradise of Southern California.
November 19, 2011
This is another outstanding book by Ross Macdonald. I thoroughly enjoyed how he weaves the concerns and facts of the real world into his fiction. One of the central elements of this novel is a large and uncontrolled oil spill of the California coast.
In at least one of the previous "Archer" books, the author had his detective reflecting on the destruction of the natural environment by "progress" and oil drilling. This was a rather leading attitude for the late 50s and 60s. By the time that "Sleeping Beauty" was written a true-life massive oil spill had occurred devastating consequences. But although the environmental theme appears throughout this book, it does not detract from the quality of the story instead it adds to it.
The other real-world event that is used in this book is World War II. Several of the characters were U.S. Naval officers or seamen (as was the author). This is tied into the current storyline by Macdonald's trademark multi-generational "crimes and sins".
I don't have a pithy comment or illustrative quote, but I strongly recommend this novel. Lew Archer shows us once again why he stands for everyman and everywoman.
In at least one of the previous "Archer" books, the author had his detective reflecting on the destruction of the natural environment by "progress" and oil drilling. This was a rather leading attitude for the late 50s and 60s. By the time that "Sleeping Beauty" was written a true-life massive oil spill had occurred devastating consequences. But although the environmental theme appears throughout this book, it does not detract from the quality of the story instead it adds to it.
The other real-world event that is used in this book is World War II. Several of the characters were U.S. Naval officers or seamen (as was the author). This is tied into the current storyline by Macdonald's trademark multi-generational "crimes and sins".
I don't have a pithy comment or illustrative quote, but I strongly recommend this novel. Lew Archer shows us once again why he stands for everyman and everywoman.
February 4, 2019
I've probably said this before in reviews of other books by Ross Macdonald but I started reading his work after enjoying some of the mysteries by his wife, Margaret Millar. Sleeping Beauty is the 3rd book of his Lew Archer series I've read now and all I can say is that I'm so glad I finally took a chance on Macdonald.
Lew Archer is a private eye in Los Angeles. He's an ex-cop who decided to work on his own. In Sleeping Beauty, he has just returned from a trip and hears about an oil spill west LA as he's driving back from the airport and decides to check things out before he returns home. While there he meets a young woman, Laurel Russo, who is upset by the spill and also by the death of a seabird that she had pulled from the oil-soaked waters.
Archer offers to drive her home, takes her to his place to calm her down. She leaves and he discovers that she has taken a bottle of nembutol (tranquilizers) from his medicine cabinet. Concerned, he drives off to try and find her. He checks with her husband, a pharmacist, from whom Laurel is currently estranged. Tom Russo hires Archer to find her.
It turns out that Laurel is from a rich family. In fact, they own the oil well that has sprung the leak. They don't like Tom Russo, feeling he is beneath their status. Laurel has an on and off again relationship with them and with her husband. Yes, she has issues.
This begins Archer's investigation into Laurel's disappearance. It appears that she has been kidnapped as her parents receive a ransom threat. Archer finds himself getting deeper into this family's history / skeletons in their closets as he continues to investigate. Is that enough to pique your interest?
This was a fantastic mystery. Ross Macdonald has such a clear and descriptive writing style. You can see the characters, the locale and even with the twists and turns, the story flows along so neatly and smoothly. Lew Archer is a fantastic character and the characters he meets over the course of his investigation are all interesting with flaws and personalities that make the whole story even more interesting and readable. I enjoyed this so very much and even the ending, which had a nice little twist, was eminently satisfying. (5 stars)
Lew Archer is a private eye in Los Angeles. He's an ex-cop who decided to work on his own. In Sleeping Beauty, he has just returned from a trip and hears about an oil spill west LA as he's driving back from the airport and decides to check things out before he returns home. While there he meets a young woman, Laurel Russo, who is upset by the spill and also by the death of a seabird that she had pulled from the oil-soaked waters.
Archer offers to drive her home, takes her to his place to calm her down. She leaves and he discovers that she has taken a bottle of nembutol (tranquilizers) from his medicine cabinet. Concerned, he drives off to try and find her. He checks with her husband, a pharmacist, from whom Laurel is currently estranged. Tom Russo hires Archer to find her.
It turns out that Laurel is from a rich family. In fact, they own the oil well that has sprung the leak. They don't like Tom Russo, feeling he is beneath their status. Laurel has an on and off again relationship with them and with her husband. Yes, she has issues.
This begins Archer's investigation into Laurel's disappearance. It appears that she has been kidnapped as her parents receive a ransom threat. Archer finds himself getting deeper into this family's history / skeletons in their closets as he continues to investigate. Is that enough to pique your interest?
This was a fantastic mystery. Ross Macdonald has such a clear and descriptive writing style. You can see the characters, the locale and even with the twists and turns, the story flows along so neatly and smoothly. Lew Archer is a fantastic character and the characters he meets over the course of his investigation are all interesting with flaws and personalities that make the whole story even more interesting and readable. I enjoyed this so very much and even the ending, which had a nice little twist, was eminently satisfying. (5 stars)
March 26, 2015
Another splendid Lew Archer tale by Ross Macdonald, rife with dark family secrets, the visitation of the sins of the fathers on the younger generation, all the themes Macdonald explored over and over in his books, always seeming to create fresh angles from which to view the human foibles on display. The mystery this time revolves around a young woman who may or may not have been kidnapped, the wealthy oil family from which she springs, and a nearly three-decade old murder. Macdonald remains one of the great private eye novelists of all time, and SLEEPING BEAUTY stands high among his many books.
September 9, 2022
Is it just me or was Macdonald getting interested in ecological themes towards the end of his run of Archer novels?
In this one we have an offshore oil spill killing sea birds and in the previous Archer, The Underground Man, it's wildfires in the California hills.
This aside Sleeping Beauty is great stuff as always, although, if anything, even more complicated than usual. You might want to make a few notes of characters just to keep everything straight.
In this one we have an offshore oil spill killing sea birds and in the previous Archer, The Underground Man, it's wildfires in the California hills.
This aside Sleeping Beauty is great stuff as always, although, if anything, even more complicated than usual. You might want to make a few notes of characters just to keep everything straight.
September 18, 2024
Sleeping Beauty (1973) (Archer # 17) was one of the last of MacDonald’s Archer books, following 24 years after the first novel in his Lew Archer series. While some writers make their heroes ageless over the decades of publication, MacDonald understands that Archer is now a bit more aged and ragged than he was two and a half decades earlier. Indeed, Archer even feels a bit awkward about making a pass at a young woman.
The weariness of Archer’s outlook is echoed in the scenery, the Los Angeles/Orange County coasts marred by a giant oil spill, possibly forever damaged. The story opens without a client coming to Archer’s office. Rather, Archer returns from a vacation in Mazatlan and, leaving the airport, head over to Pacific Point, one of his favorite places south of the airport, possibly a stand-in for Palos Verdes and Harbor City, possibly a bit made up. There, he observes the environmental destruction he just read about in a newspaper at the airport and sees a woman, later identified as Laurel Russo, in the oil-slicked surf rescuing a bird, holding the damaged grebe as if it were her child. After eating a meal at Blanche’s, he walks a bit more on the beach and finds the woman near tears in a rocky area, bemoaning the death of the bird. She tells him she does not know where to go and sort of adopts her when she appears to be feeling menaced by a man in a black turtleneck.
Taking the poor damsel to his apartment so she could call her husband, he offers her his bedroom and is accused of wanting to exact a price for his stay and he “caught a glimpse of [himself] as a middle-aged man on the make. It was true that if she had been old or ugly [he] wouldn’t have brought her home with [him]. She was neither.” But when she disappears from his apartment with a bottle of his sleeping pills from the medicine cabinet, Archer feels a responsibility for this lost soul. “She seemed to be one of those people to whom you attached your floating fears, your unexamined sorrows.” Although Tom Russo, the husband, is not overly concerned, Archer convinces him to hire Archer for $100 to find the missing wife with the bottle of sleeping pills wandering through the city.
From there, he meets Laurel’s parents, finding them odd and off-putting and that “they were like astronauts artificially sustained on an alien planet, careful but contemptuous of the unfriendly environment and its unlikely inhabitants.” When asked if Laurel had attempted suicide before, the mother only says, “Yes. She has in a way” and then admits she was playing Russian roulette in her room with the father’s revolver. The father turns out to run the oil company that is responsible for the oil spill and is preoccupied with it.
Archer proceeds to search for the missing woman who only he truly seems worried about with barely an interested client. As usual in these novels, Archer finds that Laurel’s disappearance is connected to decades-old family matters that some wanted swept under the rug and that old murders are resurfacing at a quick rate after it now turns out that Laurel is being held for ransom, possibly by a childhood boyfriend.
MacDonald once again provides the reader with a smoothly-crafted and absorbing tale where Archer step by step manages to ferret out old family secrets and shock pretty much everyone when he finally puts together what has happened in the past and its effect on the present. In some ways, the themes are quite similar to those in other Archer novels, but MacDonald manages to make it feel fresh and original here.
The weariness of Archer’s outlook is echoed in the scenery, the Los Angeles/Orange County coasts marred by a giant oil spill, possibly forever damaged. The story opens without a client coming to Archer’s office. Rather, Archer returns from a vacation in Mazatlan and, leaving the airport, head over to Pacific Point, one of his favorite places south of the airport, possibly a stand-in for Palos Verdes and Harbor City, possibly a bit made up. There, he observes the environmental destruction he just read about in a newspaper at the airport and sees a woman, later identified as Laurel Russo, in the oil-slicked surf rescuing a bird, holding the damaged grebe as if it were her child. After eating a meal at Blanche’s, he walks a bit more on the beach and finds the woman near tears in a rocky area, bemoaning the death of the bird. She tells him she does not know where to go and sort of adopts her when she appears to be feeling menaced by a man in a black turtleneck.
Taking the poor damsel to his apartment so she could call her husband, he offers her his bedroom and is accused of wanting to exact a price for his stay and he “caught a glimpse of [himself] as a middle-aged man on the make. It was true that if she had been old or ugly [he] wouldn’t have brought her home with [him]. She was neither.” But when she disappears from his apartment with a bottle of his sleeping pills from the medicine cabinet, Archer feels a responsibility for this lost soul. “She seemed to be one of those people to whom you attached your floating fears, your unexamined sorrows.” Although Tom Russo, the husband, is not overly concerned, Archer convinces him to hire Archer for $100 to find the missing wife with the bottle of sleeping pills wandering through the city.
From there, he meets Laurel’s parents, finding them odd and off-putting and that “they were like astronauts artificially sustained on an alien planet, careful but contemptuous of the unfriendly environment and its unlikely inhabitants.” When asked if Laurel had attempted suicide before, the mother only says, “Yes. She has in a way” and then admits she was playing Russian roulette in her room with the father’s revolver. The father turns out to run the oil company that is responsible for the oil spill and is preoccupied with it.
Archer proceeds to search for the missing woman who only he truly seems worried about with barely an interested client. As usual in these novels, Archer finds that Laurel’s disappearance is connected to decades-old family matters that some wanted swept under the rug and that old murders are resurfacing at a quick rate after it now turns out that Laurel is being held for ransom, possibly by a childhood boyfriend.
MacDonald once again provides the reader with a smoothly-crafted and absorbing tale where Archer step by step manages to ferret out old family secrets and shock pretty much everyone when he finally puts together what has happened in the past and its effect on the present. In some ways, the themes are quite similar to those in other Archer novels, but MacDonald manages to make it feel fresh and original here.
December 12, 2020
Wow. Every time I read a late Lew Archer, I think that they can’t get any more complicated. And this time, I’m pretty sure I’m right. It all ties together neatly, on the last page, like the Gordian knot. And though it’s unbelievable that Archer could solve this over the course of two days, it’s so headlong that you don’t care. Exhausting but enthralling.
May 19, 2021
review of
Ross MacDonald's Sleeping Beauty
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 17-18, 2021
As much as I love MacDonald's writing there's a bit too much formulaicness going on: there's almost inevitably the woman (or women) that the detective Archer finds compellingly attractive & a kidnapping (or faux kidnapping) that ups the drama ante. That sd, he did change w/ the times. In this case, 1973, environmentalism has entered the scene, stage left. I found that refreshing.
"I flew home from Mazatlán on a Wednesday afternoon. As we approached Los Angeles, the Mexicana plane dropped low over the sea and I caught my first glimpse of the oil spill.
"It lay on the blue water off Pacific Point in a free-form slick that seemed miles wide and many miles long. An offshore oil platform stood up out of its windward end like the metal handle of a dagger that had stabbed the world and made it spill black blood." - p 1
Those are the 1st 2 paragraphs & they set the scene nicely. Archer, as is so often the case, encounters a pivotal person randomly. She's carrying an oil-covered bird that she's trying to save. She quickly insinuates herself into Archer's life.
""You mentioned that you had a family. You said they were in the oil business."
""You must have misunderstood me. And I'm getting tired of being questioned, if you don't mind." Her mood was swinging like an erratic pendulum from being hurt to hurting. "You seem to be mortally afraid of getting stuck with me."" - p 10
She had sd that she had family in the oil business. In fact, they were directly connected to the oil spill. She makes off w/ Archer's sleeping pills & goes to destination unknown. Archer is concerned & feels partially responsible so he gets embroiled w/ trying to find her & to prevent her from committing suicide. One cd say that this particular female character isn't exactly positive, is a bit of a drama queen - but, HO!, there's another female character who IS positive.
"I went out to the kitchen. Gloria was drying dishes at the sink, her black hair tied up on each side with shoelaces. She gave me a quick bright glance over her shoulder. "You shouldn't come out here. This place is a mess."" - p 25
I particularly like the touch w/ the shoelaces.
""May I offer my congratulations?"
""Sure, and I accept. We'd be married now, but we want to do it right. That's why I took this little job with Tom on top of my regular job. I'd do it for nothing, but Tom can afford to pay me."
"She was a lively, open girl, and in a mood to talk now that Laurel's parents were out of hearing." - p 26
Of course, there are a few glitches: she's doing the dishes, typical stereotyped female drudge work, she's getting married (boring bourgeois pseudo-happiness).
The woman who was carrying the oil-covered bird, the one who disappeared, y'know? There're hints as to her activist mindset.
"Tom wanted children; she didn't. She said she didn't want to bring children into this world."
""What did she mean?"
""I don't know. All the violence and cruelty in the world, I guess." - p 31
I've sd pretty much the same thing..
""Do you think the blowout had anything to do with what's happened to your niece?"
""I don't quite understand. You mean some environmentalist maniac is responsible?"
""I wasn't suggesting that. I'm a bit of an environmentalist myself. So was—" I realized as I caught myself that I half believed Laurel was dead.."Your niece is, too."" - p 43
"["]Odi et amo. Excrucior."
""What does that mean?"
"" 'I hate you and I love you. And it hurts.' That's my own translation from Catullus. They printed it in the annual at River Valley School."" - p 47
Oh, c'mon! Every schoolchild knows that that's Sappho & it translates as "Odors & ammo?! Screw you!!'
"The only personal thing I found was a letter folded into a book of stories entitled Permanent Errors." - p 66
"In this collection of short stories, a young man ends a relationship, a couple journeys to Dachau, a son contemplates his mother's death, and a grieving widower finds love again with a young Navaho woman Google Books Originally published: 1970 Author: Reynolds Price" - on the etheric plane of the great oracle
"I lapsed for a while into my freeway daydream: I was mobile and unencumbered, young enough to go where I had never been and clever enough to do new things when I got there.
"The fantasy snapped in my face when I got to Santa Monica. It was just another part of the megalopolis which stretched from San Diego to Ventura, and I was a citizen of the endless city." - p 75
What a rude awakening, huh?! Still, I reckon it's not as bad as coming out of yr daydream b/c you weren't paying attn to the traffic & you run over a PROMISING YOUNG PERSON pushing one of those quadruple baby strollers.
This bk was published in 1973. MacDonald shows major signs of being sensitive to the ecological issues that many of us were discovering in the early '70s. Even more telling of the author's political awareness is the following:
"["]It was nearly dawn when he got home, and he was in poor shape. He was talking about death and destruction."
""Exactly what was he saying?"
""I wouldn't want to repeat it over the phone. You never know who's listening these days.["]" - p 87
I'm more or less positive that one of my phones was tapped in 1979. What about you?
"There were further changes on the wharf. A couple of dozen picketers were walking back and forth across its entrance. They carried homemade signs: "Do Not Patronize: Oil Facilities," "Oil Spoils," "Pollution!" Most of the picketers were middle-aged, though there were several long-haired youths among them." - p 96
What surprises me about the above is the "Most of the picketers were middle-aged" but I assume that wd've been an accurate description for his time & place. He provides a reporter's perspective & a look at direct action.
""Why didn't they take the right preventative measures?"
""It costs money," he said. "Oilmen are gamblers, most of them, and they'd rather take a little chance than spend a lot of money. Or wait for technology to catch up." He added after a moment, "They're not the only gamblers. We're all in the game. We all drive cars, and we're all hooked on oil. The question is how can we get unhooked before we drown in the stuff."" - p 98
"One of the young sign carriers sat down in front of the wheels. His face was pale and scared, as if he knew what a poor brake his body was to the heavy movements of the world. But he sat without moving as the double wheels turned almost on top of him.
"The driver spat an inaudible word and slammed on his brakes. He climbed down out of the cab, swinging a tire iron in his hand. I got out of my car at the same time and pushed through the line of picketers to face him. He was a flat-nosed young man with angry eyes.
""Get back," he said to me, "I'm making a delivery."
""Sorry, we don't need a tire iron."
""You look as if you need one, right across the face."
""It wouldn't be a good idea," I said. "Put it down, eh?"
""When you get out of the way. I'm on legitimate business."
""You don't look so legitimate with that thing in your hand."" - p 99
Go, Archer, go!
Another one of MacDonald's recurrent tropes is to have something deep in the past become relevant to the present.
""What happened to the woman?"
""Apparently she was murdered a long time ago. It may have been the same year that the gas tank ruptured and sent him into the sea. The dead woman and the ruptured gas tank came up together in the same interview."" - p 172
I'm going to give this one a 5 star review just to give MacDonald a slightly bigger plug than usual AND b/c I'm tickled pink by the 1973 activism. I reckon I cd somewhat accurately claim to've been a fledgling political activist since about 1969 or 1970 so this makes me swim back thru the waves of time. Before I was tickled pink I was sortof a sickly green so you can see why I'm thankful enuf to give a 5 star rating.
Ross MacDonald's Sleeping Beauty
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 17-18, 2021
As much as I love MacDonald's writing there's a bit too much formulaicness going on: there's almost inevitably the woman (or women) that the detective Archer finds compellingly attractive & a kidnapping (or faux kidnapping) that ups the drama ante. That sd, he did change w/ the times. In this case, 1973, environmentalism has entered the scene, stage left. I found that refreshing.
"I flew home from Mazatlán on a Wednesday afternoon. As we approached Los Angeles, the Mexicana plane dropped low over the sea and I caught my first glimpse of the oil spill.
"It lay on the blue water off Pacific Point in a free-form slick that seemed miles wide and many miles long. An offshore oil platform stood up out of its windward end like the metal handle of a dagger that had stabbed the world and made it spill black blood." - p 1
Those are the 1st 2 paragraphs & they set the scene nicely. Archer, as is so often the case, encounters a pivotal person randomly. She's carrying an oil-covered bird that she's trying to save. She quickly insinuates herself into Archer's life.
""You mentioned that you had a family. You said they were in the oil business."
""You must have misunderstood me. And I'm getting tired of being questioned, if you don't mind." Her mood was swinging like an erratic pendulum from being hurt to hurting. "You seem to be mortally afraid of getting stuck with me."" - p 10
She had sd that she had family in the oil business. In fact, they were directly connected to the oil spill. She makes off w/ Archer's sleeping pills & goes to destination unknown. Archer is concerned & feels partially responsible so he gets embroiled w/ trying to find her & to prevent her from committing suicide. One cd say that this particular female character isn't exactly positive, is a bit of a drama queen - but, HO!, there's another female character who IS positive.
"I went out to the kitchen. Gloria was drying dishes at the sink, her black hair tied up on each side with shoelaces. She gave me a quick bright glance over her shoulder. "You shouldn't come out here. This place is a mess."" - p 25
I particularly like the touch w/ the shoelaces.
""May I offer my congratulations?"
""Sure, and I accept. We'd be married now, but we want to do it right. That's why I took this little job with Tom on top of my regular job. I'd do it for nothing, but Tom can afford to pay me."
"She was a lively, open girl, and in a mood to talk now that Laurel's parents were out of hearing." - p 26
Of course, there are a few glitches: she's doing the dishes, typical stereotyped female drudge work, she's getting married (boring bourgeois pseudo-happiness).
The woman who was carrying the oil-covered bird, the one who disappeared, y'know? There're hints as to her activist mindset.
"Tom wanted children; she didn't. She said she didn't want to bring children into this world."
""What did she mean?"
""I don't know. All the violence and cruelty in the world, I guess." - p 31
I've sd pretty much the same thing..
""Do you think the blowout had anything to do with what's happened to your niece?"
""I don't quite understand. You mean some environmentalist maniac is responsible?"
""I wasn't suggesting that. I'm a bit of an environmentalist myself. So was—" I realized as I caught myself that I half believed Laurel was dead.."Your niece is, too."" - p 43
"["]Odi et amo. Excrucior."
""What does that mean?"
"" 'I hate you and I love you. And it hurts.' That's my own translation from Catullus. They printed it in the annual at River Valley School."" - p 47
Oh, c'mon! Every schoolchild knows that that's Sappho & it translates as "Odors & ammo?! Screw you!!'
"The only personal thing I found was a letter folded into a book of stories entitled Permanent Errors." - p 66
"In this collection of short stories, a young man ends a relationship, a couple journeys to Dachau, a son contemplates his mother's death, and a grieving widower finds love again with a young Navaho woman Google Books Originally published: 1970 Author: Reynolds Price" - on the etheric plane of the great oracle
"I lapsed for a while into my freeway daydream: I was mobile and unencumbered, young enough to go where I had never been and clever enough to do new things when I got there.
"The fantasy snapped in my face when I got to Santa Monica. It was just another part of the megalopolis which stretched from San Diego to Ventura, and I was a citizen of the endless city." - p 75
What a rude awakening, huh?! Still, I reckon it's not as bad as coming out of yr daydream b/c you weren't paying attn to the traffic & you run over a PROMISING YOUNG PERSON pushing one of those quadruple baby strollers.
This bk was published in 1973. MacDonald shows major signs of being sensitive to the ecological issues that many of us were discovering in the early '70s. Even more telling of the author's political awareness is the following:
"["]It was nearly dawn when he got home, and he was in poor shape. He was talking about death and destruction."
""Exactly what was he saying?"
""I wouldn't want to repeat it over the phone. You never know who's listening these days.["]" - p 87
I'm more or less positive that one of my phones was tapped in 1979. What about you?
"There were further changes on the wharf. A couple of dozen picketers were walking back and forth across its entrance. They carried homemade signs: "Do Not Patronize: Oil Facilities," "Oil Spoils," "Pollution!" Most of the picketers were middle-aged, though there were several long-haired youths among them." - p 96
What surprises me about the above is the "Most of the picketers were middle-aged" but I assume that wd've been an accurate description for his time & place. He provides a reporter's perspective & a look at direct action.
""Why didn't they take the right preventative measures?"
""It costs money," he said. "Oilmen are gamblers, most of them, and they'd rather take a little chance than spend a lot of money. Or wait for technology to catch up." He added after a moment, "They're not the only gamblers. We're all in the game. We all drive cars, and we're all hooked on oil. The question is how can we get unhooked before we drown in the stuff."" - p 98
"One of the young sign carriers sat down in front of the wheels. His face was pale and scared, as if he knew what a poor brake his body was to the heavy movements of the world. But he sat without moving as the double wheels turned almost on top of him.
"The driver spat an inaudible word and slammed on his brakes. He climbed down out of the cab, swinging a tire iron in his hand. I got out of my car at the same time and pushed through the line of picketers to face him. He was a flat-nosed young man with angry eyes.
""Get back," he said to me, "I'm making a delivery."
""Sorry, we don't need a tire iron."
""You look as if you need one, right across the face."
""It wouldn't be a good idea," I said. "Put it down, eh?"
""When you get out of the way. I'm on legitimate business."
""You don't look so legitimate with that thing in your hand."" - p 99
Go, Archer, go!
Another one of MacDonald's recurrent tropes is to have something deep in the past become relevant to the present.
""What happened to the woman?"
""Apparently she was murdered a long time ago. It may have been the same year that the gas tank ruptured and sent him into the sea. The dead woman and the ruptured gas tank came up together in the same interview."" - p 172
I'm going to give this one a 5 star review just to give MacDonald a slightly bigger plug than usual AND b/c I'm tickled pink by the 1973 activism. I reckon I cd somewhat accurately claim to've been a fledgling political activist since about 1969 or 1970 so this makes me swim back thru the waves of time. Before I was tickled pink I was sortof a sickly green so you can see why I'm thankful enuf to give a 5 star rating.
Read
April 11, 2020گم شدن زیبای خفته داستان ماجراهای پیچیدهی خانوادهایست که در نگاه نخست هیچ چیز کم ندارند. آن ها ثروتمند، فرهیخته و متعلق به طبقهی مرفه جامعه هستند؛ اما درونی انباشته از خشونت و رازهای تکان دهنده دارند. روایت استادانه راس مک دونالد از خاطرات دفن شده ، عواقب زورگویی و روابط دلهره آور والدین و فرزندانشان داستانی عالی درباره ی جرم است.
***
بخشی از مرور کتاب «گم شدن زیبای خفته» در سایت آوانگارد که به قلم «نسرین ریاحیپور» منتشر شده است.
برای خواندن کامل مطلب به لینک زیر مراجعه فرمایید:
https://avangard.ir/article/455
***
بخشی از مرور کتاب «گم شدن زیبای خفته» در سایت آوانگارد که به قلم «نسرین ریاحیپور» منتشر شده است.
برای خواندن کامل مطلب به لینک زیر مراجعه فرمایید:
https://avangard.ir/article/455
March 8, 2020
17th and second to last Lew Archer mystery.
Down in the dark street, sailors were standing around in disconnected attitudes, like dim purgatorial souls waiting for orders.
Another superb Lew Archer novel from Ross Macdonald.
Down in the dark street, sailors were standing around in disconnected attitudes, like dim purgatorial souls waiting for orders.
Another superb Lew Archer novel from Ross Macdonald.
August 10, 2022
One of the best Archer novels. The actual case is initially the search for a missing person. This soon turns into a kidnapping and finally there are several murders. And in between stands the Californian private detective, who once again digs into the past of those involved in the crime. The West Coast's moneyed aristocracy comes off badly, having created one of the book's "main characters": an oil spill caused by a drilling rig. First published in 1973, the book thus has an astonishing topicality, showing how the greed for money stops at nothing - be it through direct murders or through the destruction of everyone's livelihood.
Minimal flaw: Because of the fixation on the entanglements of the past, all of Archer's crime novels resemble each other and, at least at times, seem slightly contrived. However, Macdonald's polished style and striking imagery more than make up for this slight flaw. In addition, the descriptions of the California coastline are always easy to read. Almost at the beginning of each chapter, the protagonist drives along this and that drive or highway to a beach or neighborhood. Anyone who has ever been to California and its unique landscape will enjoy each of these lines.
By the end of the book, the case is solved, but the investigator doesn't indulge in triumph. He is a man of quiet tones, in constant self-analysis, and always aware that the powerful almost always have more pull. But what they have in common with the weak is that no one can escape his own past.
Minimal flaw: Because of the fixation on the entanglements of the past, all of Archer's crime novels resemble each other and, at least at times, seem slightly contrived. However, Macdonald's polished style and striking imagery more than make up for this slight flaw. In addition, the descriptions of the California coastline are always easy to read. Almost at the beginning of each chapter, the protagonist drives along this and that drive or highway to a beach or neighborhood. Anyone who has ever been to California and its unique landscape will enjoy each of these lines.
By the end of the book, the case is solved, but the investigator doesn't indulge in triumph. He is a man of quiet tones, in constant self-analysis, and always aware that the powerful almost always have more pull. But what they have in common with the weak is that no one can escape his own past.
February 18, 2023
People like to accuse Ross Macdonald of writing about the same thing for practically every single book, but hey, I can still listen to the exact same Philip Glass arpeggio in a new chord sequence and still be thrilled every single time.
This is late period Macdonald, the second to last book he'd ever write, and even if the man is still playing variations on the theme, there's a strong and palpable sense of grimness, finality, and nihilistic anguish (even by the self-serious standards of the Archer series) that seems to put it apart from his other books. It has some weak moments and what feels like some narrative dead-ends, but it contains some of his most gothic imagery and several of the most broken, haunted, and ghostly characters he'd ever write -- someone mentions at some point Nietzsche's law about history being doomed to repeat itself, which in itself feels like the de jure of the entire Archer series, where murder, revenge, and trauma are elements as fundamental to the earth as water and oil.
This is late period Macdonald, the second to last book he'd ever write, and even if the man is still playing variations on the theme, there's a strong and palpable sense of grimness, finality, and nihilistic anguish (even by the self-serious standards of the Archer series) that seems to put it apart from his other books. It has some weak moments and what feels like some narrative dead-ends, but it contains some of his most gothic imagery and several of the most broken, haunted, and ghostly characters he'd ever write -- someone mentions at some point Nietzsche's law about history being doomed to repeat itself, which in itself feels like the de jure of the entire Archer series, where murder, revenge, and trauma are elements as fundamental to the earth as water and oil.
April 10, 2021
Another terrific Lew Archer mystery, I've now read all of them. The plot covers the complex themes of family dynamics, historical secrets, wealth, psychological elements and a love story wrapped in a pseudo kidnapping plot in an environmental oil spill disaster. The story spirals and weaves into twists and turns, murder and deception and a tenacious investigation. Archer reveals the murderer as he pulls the puzzle together with his confrontational questioning of the characters and seems to pinpoint the least suspecting woman in the story, as in most of the stories.
December 26, 2019
This novel caught me off guard. It opens as a hard-boiled California noir detective novel, and has some environmentalist and anti-capitalist overtones. That's standard Macdonald fare.
But this is actually an intricately-plotted mystery in the model of the British golden age. There are a lot of characters, but they are well distinguished and (mostly) justified. Clues are doled out, complicated relationships emerge, and until the last few pages it seems like any outcome is possible.
But this is actually an intricately-plotted mystery in the model of the British golden age. There are a lot of characters, but they are well distinguished and (mostly) justified. Clues are doled out, complicated relationships emerge, and until the last few pages it seems like any outcome is possible.
February 26, 2020
A complex and complicated tale of family lies and murder. Macdonald never disappoints.
February 18, 2016
"An offshore oil platform stood up out of its windward end like the metal handle of the dagger that has stabbed the world and made it spill back blood."
Sleeping Beauty, Ross Macdonald's penultimate Lew Archer novel, was published in 1973. I remember finding it one of the best entries in the series when I read all books by Mr. Millar (Ross Macdonald's real name) between 30 and 40 years ago. So I feel a bit disappointed that I have not enjoyed the book as much now as I had in the past, even if I still find it well written and hard to put down and even if I think that the very beginning of the novel is outstanding, perhaps not quite in the class of The Underground Man , but still unforgettable. Also, on a personal note, I had first read Sleeping Beauty in late 1970s, when living in Poland, and I could not imagine that about five years later I will take strolls on the same beaches that provide location for the major events in the story.
Lew Archer is returning home from Mazatlán and when the plane is flying low over the region of Pacific Point (a fictional town that is thought to represents La Jolla or Newport Beach) he catches a glimpse of oil spill. Instead of going home he drives to Pacific Point and watches oil workers struggling to contain the spill. On the beach he encounters a young woman, Laurel, who is trying to save a grebe fouled with oil. She asks him to drive her to Los Angeles and Archer learns that she is the granddaughter of the man whose well is spilling the oil. They stop at his apartment and Laurel steals a bottle of Nembutal sleeping pills from Archer's medicine cabinet. She then disappears and Archer, driven by guilt, manages to get hired by Tom, Laurel's husband, to search for her. Archer gets to know the entire oil-rich Lennox family, and learns a lot about dramatic events from their past. He also becomes an unwilling participant in grim current happenings caused by shadows of the past.
This is quintessential Macdonald. The events that occur in the early 1970s are driven by repercussions of what happened quarter of century earlier. People cannot escape the consequences of their past and the long-buried secrets and lies are resurrected to cast their horrific shadows. Children and grandchildren suffer because of sins committed by their parents and grandparents. Greed is the driving force of human actions: murder is justifiable since "Dad's estate is hanging in the balance." Although I share the author's bitter and cynical outlook on the causes of human suffering, I am unable to fully appreciate the novel. Maybe because the plot is way too complicated and its details and twists virtually impossible to follow? Or maybe because of too many convenient coincidences that help drive the plot?
All in all, I think it is mainly the oil spill theme that saves Sleeping Beauty from being an unremarkable novel for this great author. Mr. Millar's environmental awareness, not that common in the early 1970s, shines through.
Three and a quarter stars.
Sleeping Beauty, Ross Macdonald's penultimate Lew Archer novel, was published in 1973. I remember finding it one of the best entries in the series when I read all books by Mr. Millar (Ross Macdonald's real name) between 30 and 40 years ago. So I feel a bit disappointed that I have not enjoyed the book as much now as I had in the past, even if I still find it well written and hard to put down and even if I think that the very beginning of the novel is outstanding, perhaps not quite in the class of The Underground Man , but still unforgettable. Also, on a personal note, I had first read Sleeping Beauty in late 1970s, when living in Poland, and I could not imagine that about five years later I will take strolls on the same beaches that provide location for the major events in the story.
Lew Archer is returning home from Mazatlán and when the plane is flying low over the region of Pacific Point (a fictional town that is thought to represents La Jolla or Newport Beach) he catches a glimpse of oil spill. Instead of going home he drives to Pacific Point and watches oil workers struggling to contain the spill. On the beach he encounters a young woman, Laurel, who is trying to save a grebe fouled with oil. She asks him to drive her to Los Angeles and Archer learns that she is the granddaughter of the man whose well is spilling the oil. They stop at his apartment and Laurel steals a bottle of Nembutal sleeping pills from Archer's medicine cabinet. She then disappears and Archer, driven by guilt, manages to get hired by Tom, Laurel's husband, to search for her. Archer gets to know the entire oil-rich Lennox family, and learns a lot about dramatic events from their past. He also becomes an unwilling participant in grim current happenings caused by shadows of the past.
This is quintessential Macdonald. The events that occur in the early 1970s are driven by repercussions of what happened quarter of century earlier. People cannot escape the consequences of their past and the long-buried secrets and lies are resurrected to cast their horrific shadows. Children and grandchildren suffer because of sins committed by their parents and grandparents. Greed is the driving force of human actions: murder is justifiable since "Dad's estate is hanging in the balance." Although I share the author's bitter and cynical outlook on the causes of human suffering, I am unable to fully appreciate the novel. Maybe because the plot is way too complicated and its details and twists virtually impossible to follow? Or maybe because of too many convenient coincidences that help drive the plot?
All in all, I think it is mainly the oil spill theme that saves Sleeping Beauty from being an unremarkable novel for this great author. Mr. Millar's environmental awareness, not that common in the early 1970s, shines through.
Three and a quarter stars.
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