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The Ferguson Affair
It was a long way from the million-dollar Foothill Club to Pelly Street, where grudges were settled in blood and Spanish and a stolen diamond ring landed a girl in jail. Defense lawyer Bill Gunnarson was making the trip—fast. He already knew a kidnapping at the club was tied to the girl's hot rock, and he suspected that a missing Hollywood starlet was the key to a busy crime ring. But while Gunnarson made his way through a storm of deception, money, drugs, and passions, he couldn't guess how some big shots and small-timers would all end up with murder in common...
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1967
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About the author
Ross Macdonald
160 books815 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 53 reviews
April 19, 2019
The Ferguson Affair is the last MacDonald novel that does not belong to the Archer series, and it is also the best. His hero Bill Gunnarson—a young lawyer appointed as public defender for a woman with a stolen ring—lacks Lew's world weary perspective, and his wholesome and very pregnant wife adds to his vulnerability but does not advance the action nor contribute substantially to the theme or atmosphere.
Still, the plot—as it progresses from possession of stolen goods to burglary, murder and kidnapping, and shifts location from country club to poor urban Mexican neighborhood to shabby small town home—is intricate and satisfying, and contains the usual Macdonald family mysteries and masquerades.
This is well-crafted, but not essential Madonald.
May 9, 2020
I always find Ross Macdonald's crime novels engaging. This title does the same. His protagonist is a criminal lawyer with a very understanding and very pregnant wife. He has the same instincts of persistence and honesty found in the hardboiled private eyes. The truth, as it is here, isn't pretty. I like RM's writing style, especially the tone he takes. Some of the stuff about illicit drugs strikes me as a little dated but doesn't distract from the story. I'm happy I had the opportunity to read another Ross Macdonald book, and it was a good one.
December 8, 2024
Starting in 1949, Millar writing as Ross MacDonald focused almost exclusively on his Lew Archer series, producing only one more standalone novel, the Ferguson Affair in 1960. The Ferguson Affair has a defense attorney, William Gunnarson, as the lead character, and is set in fictional Buenavista, which happens to be the name of a famous San Francisco bar or might just be a twist on San Buenaventura, the original Spanish name for Ventura, California, where it just so happens Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, practiced law. It seems too unlikely that this was just a coincidence as MacDonald was familiar with Southern California. It appears more likely that he was paying the great Gardner homage. Unlike Gardner’s Perry Mason, though, MacDonald’s Gunnarson novel does not resolve in a courtroom scene. Gunnarsman actually feels more like a private eye novel with Gunnarsman fronting for a private eye.
In fact, the attorney aspect of the novel is primarily by means of the introduction to the case as it is Gunnarson’s turn in the rotation by alphabet to interview the new arrestee, a young nurse named Ella Barker who had been arrested on a stolen-property charge. Barker gives several conflicting stories to Gunnarson about where she obtained the stolen ring, with a diamond worth four or five hundred dollars. Despite the lies, Gunnarson concludes that whatever secrets lay in her sleek dark head, they were not criminal secrets. “Ella lacked the earmarks of the type: the dull-eyed resignation, the wild flares of rebelliousness, the indescribable feral odor of sex that has grown claws.”
Gunnarson follows the police investigating the death of Hector Broadman and finds that Barker had been connected with Broadman and had, in fact, dated him briefly. Gunnarson quips to Barker that Broadman must have liked her a lot since Broadman’s platinum watch was found in her house. Although the clues keep pointing to Barker’s involvement, Gunnarson has a thought that she may indeed be innocent, particularly when there is more killing and the gang of house thieves is connected. And she finally admits to him that it was not Broadman who gave her the watch – Larry Gaines, a lifeguard at the Foothill Club. She had dumped Broadman for Gaines, who made her do crazy things and had crazy schemes. She also tells Gunnarsman that she caught Gaines with another woman, a blonde, who looked like the hottest movie star in the world, Holly May, although it could not possibly be her.
Soon, the case leads Gunnarsman far and wide away from a simple stolen jewelry ring into a couple of murders, which he suspects one of the police detectives committed in revenge for a teenage jealousy years earlier. The case also leads Gunnarsman to a disappearing movie star and a ransom demand for her return, although it appears to him that Holly May is more of a willing participant in the kidnapping than should be possible.
MacDonald does an excellent job of putting this novel together. He could well have had a series starring Gunnarson had he not focused so exclusively on Lew Archer.
In fact, the attorney aspect of the novel is primarily by means of the introduction to the case as it is Gunnarson’s turn in the rotation by alphabet to interview the new arrestee, a young nurse named Ella Barker who had been arrested on a stolen-property charge. Barker gives several conflicting stories to Gunnarson about where she obtained the stolen ring, with a diamond worth four or five hundred dollars. Despite the lies, Gunnarson concludes that whatever secrets lay in her sleek dark head, they were not criminal secrets. “Ella lacked the earmarks of the type: the dull-eyed resignation, the wild flares of rebelliousness, the indescribable feral odor of sex that has grown claws.”
Gunnarson follows the police investigating the death of Hector Broadman and finds that Barker had been connected with Broadman and had, in fact, dated him briefly. Gunnarson quips to Barker that Broadman must have liked her a lot since Broadman’s platinum watch was found in her house. Although the clues keep pointing to Barker’s involvement, Gunnarson has a thought that she may indeed be innocent, particularly when there is more killing and the gang of house thieves is connected. And she finally admits to him that it was not Broadman who gave her the watch – Larry Gaines, a lifeguard at the Foothill Club. She had dumped Broadman for Gaines, who made her do crazy things and had crazy schemes. She also tells Gunnarsman that she caught Gaines with another woman, a blonde, who looked like the hottest movie star in the world, Holly May, although it could not possibly be her.
Soon, the case leads Gunnarsman far and wide away from a simple stolen jewelry ring into a couple of murders, which he suspects one of the police detectives committed in revenge for a teenage jealousy years earlier. The case also leads Gunnarsman to a disappearing movie star and a ransom demand for her return, although it appears to him that Holly May is more of a willing participant in the kidnapping than should be possible.
MacDonald does an excellent job of putting this novel together. He could well have had a series starring Gunnarson had he not focused so exclusively on Lew Archer.
February 7, 2025
1960
A mystery starring a lawyer named Gunnarson.
I know from having read the biography of Ross Macdonald (actually Kenneth Millar) that when this came out it was extremely popular, exceeding his Lew Archer series at the time. It has been suggested that this was because Perry Mason was super popular on TV.
Lawyers were cooler than detectives that year.
A mystery starring a lawyer named Gunnarson.
I know from having read the biography of Ross Macdonald (actually Kenneth Millar) that when this came out it was extremely popular, exceeding his Lew Archer series at the time. It has been suggested that this was because Perry Mason was super popular on TV.
Lawyers were cooler than detectives that year.
October 7, 2018
Enjoyable mystery by Ross Macdonald, this time without his P.I. Lew Archer as the protag.
June 29, 2020
One of the few Ross Macdoanld mysteries that do not feature private detective Lew Archer.
Here the protagonist is lawyer William Gunnarson. A very well written hard boiled Noir mystery set in 1960s California. Robberies, kidnapping, and murder are all tied together in a scandal surrounding a young Hollywood starlet who wants nothing more than to retire to marry an Albertan Oilman who is old enough to be her father.
Gunnarson’s client is a nurse who was roped into to giving information to the robbery ring by her sometime boyfriend, a smooth talking wannabe actor who is looking for a way up, by any means.
To keep his client out of jail, Gunnarson needs to solve a mystery that has its origins in a selfish act by a foolish young man over twenty years before.
Recommended if you are a fan of noir. Ross Macdonald is very careful tying up every strand at the end.
Here the protagonist is lawyer William Gunnarson. A very well written hard boiled Noir mystery set in 1960s California. Robberies, kidnapping, and murder are all tied together in a scandal surrounding a young Hollywood starlet who wants nothing more than to retire to marry an Albertan Oilman who is old enough to be her father.
Gunnarson’s client is a nurse who was roped into to giving information to the robbery ring by her sometime boyfriend, a smooth talking wannabe actor who is looking for a way up, by any means.
To keep his client out of jail, Gunnarson needs to solve a mystery that has its origins in a selfish act by a foolish young man over twenty years before.
Recommended if you are a fan of noir. Ross Macdonald is very careful tying up every strand at the end.
July 16, 2015
One of my favourite detective books. I like the plot and how Ross McDonald created a web of clues and hints allowing readers to guess the criminals' identities themselves (what I did), but it doesn't make the hero seem dumb. Another reason I like the book so much is the main hero, defense lawyer Bill Gunnarson, who is honest, brave and kind. For example, the whole story begins when he: a) is sent to defend a girl too poor to pay him; b) helps to drive a drunk witness home. Oh, and the fact Bill has a pregnant wife also helps to deepen his personality.
February 8, 2012
A pretty decent mystery read. It was my first Ross MacDonald and I definitely enjoyed it enough to check out more of his work down the road. The story definitely kept the reader guessing until the end although the clues were there the whole time. And not for nothing but I was impressed at MacDonald's take on social issues given that the book was published in 1960. Nothing special but I wasn't expecting the racial reflections or dialogue on drug use.
October 22, 2019
This is terrifically boring. Bill Gunnarson is such a stick, and the dialogue is so flat, that I no longer care about the “robbery gang.” Or the murder. Or anyone. This reads a lot like a book Macdonald wrote early on but couldn’t get published until Lew Archer took off. Stopping at page 88 and moving on.
September 16, 2023
I really liked this concept and all of the twists and turns the story had to offer. I think that this book was too short and sort’ve rushed. There were so many plot lines and details that were all hurried over, and i think this could have been amazing if everything were more fleshed out and it were longer.
April 20, 2021
review of
Ross MacDonald's The Ferguson Affair
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 17, 2021
If there are any regular readers of my reviews out there you will've no doubt noticed that I've invented (or think I may've invented) a new genre that I call Springboard Reviews: i.e.: I use reviewing as a springboard for whatever flights of fancy or scholariness or self-reference the part of the bks under my scrutiny I may choose to quote inspires. I try to avoid spoiling the plot but I also usually try to give a taste of some of the flavor of the bk. Given that I almost exclusively read (&, therefore, review) bks that I like, it's fun to be inspired by them. Some reviews go much further afield than others. Those are usually the biggest pleasure to write. When I start writing a review I'm not usually that sure of where I'm going to go w/ it. That's certainly the case today.
I get the impression that many repeat readers of MacDonald prefer his Lew Archer stories over the much fewer non-Lew-Archer stories. So far, I've liked them all. One of them had a probation officer as the detecting character, this one has a public defender. I find those variations interesting.
""Innocence or guilt has nothing to do with it, Miss Barker. The judges keep an alphabetical list of all the attorneys in town. We take turns representing defendants without funds. My name happened to be next on the list."
""What did you say your name was?"
""Gunnarson. William Gunnarson."
""It's a funny name," she said, wrinkling her nose." - p 1
Unsurprisingly, dramatic tension is provided by having the defendent be in deep shit & simultaneously not cooperating w/ the lawyer appointed to defend her. Equally unsurprisingly, sd lawyer decides to go to great lengths to champion her anyway. How often does this latter happen in 'real life'? One wonders. Probably not enuf.
"I sat and glared at the back of her sleek dark head. I couldn't guess what secrets lay coiled inside of it, but I was morally certain that they weren't criminal secrets. Ella lacked the earmarks of the type: the dull-eyed resignation, the wild flares of rebelliousness, the indescribable feral odor of sex that has grown claws." - p 4
I find that description.. interesting.. & somewhat self-contradictory: "dull-eyed resignation" strikes me as contradicting "wild flares of rebelliousness" & "feral odor of sex that has grown claws" is particularly interesting in & of itself: something that's feral is something that's gone from tame back to its natural state of being wild: I suggest that sex is wild to begin w/ & that various forces often seek to tame it.. w/o success. Trying to tame sex is like trying to force trees to grow in the shape of boards, for all I know there's someone working on such a genetic modification idea as I write.. but I don't think it's a good idea.
"The mere idea of detectives at the Foothill Club was incongruous. It was one of those monumentally unpretentious places where you could still imagine that the sun had never set on the international set. It cost five thousand dollars to join, and membership was limited to three hundred. Even if you had the five thousand, you had to wait for one of the members to die. And then take a blood test, for blueness." - p 27
Ha ha! This bk was 1st published in 1960. $5,000 in 1960 wd be worth $44,742.74 in 2021 (according to the CPI Inflation Counter). One might ask: do such expensive clubs actually exist?
"Liberty National Golf Course in Jersey City, NJ
• Initiation fee: $450,000-$500,000; Annual dues: $29,000.
• Across from Manhattan, it has a marina and private vessel for its 200 members. It cost $250 million to build, making it the most expensive golf course ever built." - https://www.helenbrowngroup.com/a-pee...
The above website lists 22 that're "just a glimpse into some of the priciest golf clubs", the example isn't the most exclusive one. One club has a $1,000,000 inititation fee. I asked the internet what country clubs Jeffrey Epstein belonged to but didn't find the answer. I did find a list of his "high society contacts" here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/... . I suppose that if I wanted to pursue that further I cd check to see what country clubs those people belong to but I didn't bother. My personal country club is called my backyard. Then there're the public parks.
What I don't understand is why people hate on Epstein so much at the same time that Fifty Shades of Grey is a best-seller made into a movie? A friend of mine who's a mom gave her coming-of-age daughter a copy of Fifty Shades as a birthday present - wasn't that grooming her to be a masochistic sex slave to wealth & power?
But I di_____.
MacDonald observes some variety of class & culture.
""What else does she say?"
""Nothing. She says a woman is a fool to go to the hospital. Nobody ain't gonna make her. The hospital is where you die, she says. Her sister is a medica."" - p 70
The old woman is poor & Latino. Hence, in mainstream 'white' culture she might be perceived as ignorant for distrusting hospitals. But what if she's wise?
""We won't argue, Colonel. Haven't you ever been to a local doctor?"
""I don't go to doctors. The blasted doctors killed my mother."" - p 102
Now, he's a 'white' guy - but even he too wd be commonly perceived as a fool for rejecting doctors - &, yet, how many of us have had bad experiences w/ 'Western Medicine'? I have. See the "Personal Backstory" chapter of my Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC bk ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... ).
"I sat and watched her, She had reddish-brown hair, but in other respects her resemblance to Holly May was striking. It was a phenomenom I'd noticed before: whole generations of girls looked like the movie actresses of their period. Perhaps they made themselves up to resemble the actresses. Perhaps the actresses made themselves up to embody some common ideal. Or perhaps they became actresses by virtue of the fact that they already resembled the common ideal." - p 112
Think of Betty Page.
Back to the Latino subculture:
""This is Mr. Gunnarson," Padilla said. "He won't give the little one mal ojo. He is a lawyer trying to find out what happened here today."" - p 129
"Mal de ojo is a Spanish term meaning “evil eye,” which is frequently used to refer to a culturally specific illness common in Latin Americans and Latino immigrants in the United States. The origin of mal de ojo has been traced to the Eastern Mediterranean and Greco-Roman traditions, although many variations of this syndrome have existed for thousands of years. The widespread belief of the evil eye in Latin America is credited to the Spanish colonizers who brought it to the continent, amid combinations that resulted from indigenous and folk-healing systems. In Brazil, the equivalent for the evil eye is called “olho gordo” or “mau olhado,” that is translated as “fat eye.” Among Latin American popular cultures mal de ojo is generally believed to be caused by a strong stare full of jealousy, envy, or admiration directed at either vulnerable or perceived weaker individuals such as women or children. Certainly, babies and infants are considered at special risk for the evil eye, given the.." - https://link.springer.com/referencewo...
""Is Mrs. Donato here?"
"Arcadia shook her head. "She went to the albolaria. She says there is a curse on the family which only the albolaria can take off."" - p 130
"Albolario
"Startled person, with little sense." - https://translate.google.com/translat...
"like all the other moms he knew, but boiling down herbs, extracting essences she used as a curandera, an albolaria, a folk healer." - p 247, The Edge of Chaos (fiction) by Pamela McCorduck
Interesting, eh? One online definition has an albolaria as a person w/ little sense while a fictional usage has it meaning what MacDonald apparently intends it to mean: a folk healer.
""Arcadia wants me to stay with her. She put Torres in the clink for nonsupport. Now she's scared to be alone herself. She thinks maybe she's getting susto, too."
""What is susto?"
""Bad sickness. The doctor says it's psychological, like. My mother says it's from an evil spirit."
""Which do you say?"
""I dunno. They taught in high school there was no such thing as evil spirits. But I dunno."" - p 133
"The neon sign of the bars and cafés hung like ignis fatuus on the twilight." - p 131
"In folklore, a will-o'-the-wisp, will-o'-wisp or ignis fatuus (Latin for 'giddy flame', plural ignes fatui), is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. The phenomenon is known in English folk belief, English folklore and much of European folklore by a variety of names, including jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, hinkypunk and hobby lantern and is said to mislead travelers by resembling a flickering lamp or lantern. In literature, will-o'-the-wisp metaphorically refers to a hope or goal that leads one on but is impossible to reach or something one finds sinister and confounding." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%...
MacDonald uses both Spanish & Latin. I'm reminded of Myles na gCopaleen's wonderful column for the Irish Times in wch I recall him using as many as 5 languages in one little piece. Those were the days, eh? Do novelists still dare to tread in such scholarly waters?
I enjoy writing that refers to a wide variety of things - including music, other writing, & the arts. Why not? If I know about what's referred to then there's an enriched image for me, if I don't, then, perhaps I learn something.
"The floodlights were burning outside Ferguson's house, throwing Chirico shadows along the cliff and up the driveway." - p 134
Anyone familiar w/ Giorgio de Chirico's early paintings knows how strong a part the shadows play. They show the striking effect of a sun not seen.
MacDonald doesn't shy from psychological types that some people might prefer to deny the existence of. Take the example of the castrating mother:
"["]I told him about the awful things that can happen to a boy, the disasters and the diseases. He was very meek and mild. He cried in my lap, and he promised that he would be a good boy forever. But he betrayed me, betrayed my confidence in him."
"The cat stood still, like a cat in a frieze, transfixed by her high, thin voice. Its moaning changed to a snarling, and its long tail erected itself.
""Be quiet, Harry, I had the same trouble with you until I had you fixed. Didn't I boy?" she asked liltingly. "But you still love your mother, don't you boy? Eh, Harry?"" - p 146
Of course, there are times when MacDonald seems like an old fuddy-duddy.
"The jukebox was playing rock—music for civilizations to deline by, man." - p 150
Spike Jones hated rock. Then again, I think of the Dadaists as having critiqued civilization as having produced WWI - not everyone sees only the bright side of civilization, it can be a killing machine too. Anyway, this bk's from 1960. What was the rock music of the time? Roy Orbison? Elvis Presley? Chubby Checker? The Everly Brothers? It was too early for the Mothers of Invention, Bonzo Dog Band, pretty much every rock group I've been interested in didn't come along until the mid-'60s & later. Soft Machine, Henry Cow, etc.
"The woman tittered like a broken xylophone. Unkempt as she was, her bleached hair stringy as hemp, her lips bulging in a pair of men's jeans, she dragged at the attention. Her eyes were blowtorch blue in a white, frozen face." - p 167
I deduce that the "lips bulging in a pair of men's jeans" were camel toe - or, in my slang, PVC (Prominent Vulva Crease). Why knock it?
""Don't get panicky now. She's in the nursery, and she's physically perfect. Not to mention precociously intelligent and aware. I can tell by the way she nurses. That makes the problem even more urgent. We have to give her a name, for her to start forming her personality around. We can't simply go on calling her Her, like something out of H. Rider Haggard."" - p 187
The reference being, of course, to Haggard's adventure novel She. Am I being overly explanatory? I just figure that as an ancient being I shd share possibly forgotten lore before I evaporate.
""She'll need the best criminal lawyer and the best psychiatrists your money can procure. They won't be able to get her off, of course, but they can save her from the extreme penalty. No one with strong financial backing is ever executed."" - p 215
Remember money? That was a physical thing that passed from one person to another. People acquired it in all sorts of ways. It's almost the same as what we have today - except that it wasn't quite so easy for the ruling elites to punish & reward.
Ross MacDonald's The Ferguson Affair
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 17, 2021
If there are any regular readers of my reviews out there you will've no doubt noticed that I've invented (or think I may've invented) a new genre that I call Springboard Reviews: i.e.: I use reviewing as a springboard for whatever flights of fancy or scholariness or self-reference the part of the bks under my scrutiny I may choose to quote inspires. I try to avoid spoiling the plot but I also usually try to give a taste of some of the flavor of the bk. Given that I almost exclusively read (&, therefore, review) bks that I like, it's fun to be inspired by them. Some reviews go much further afield than others. Those are usually the biggest pleasure to write. When I start writing a review I'm not usually that sure of where I'm going to go w/ it. That's certainly the case today.
I get the impression that many repeat readers of MacDonald prefer his Lew Archer stories over the much fewer non-Lew-Archer stories. So far, I've liked them all. One of them had a probation officer as the detecting character, this one has a public defender. I find those variations interesting.
""Innocence or guilt has nothing to do with it, Miss Barker. The judges keep an alphabetical list of all the attorneys in town. We take turns representing defendants without funds. My name happened to be next on the list."
""What did you say your name was?"
""Gunnarson. William Gunnarson."
""It's a funny name," she said, wrinkling her nose." - p 1
Unsurprisingly, dramatic tension is provided by having the defendent be in deep shit & simultaneously not cooperating w/ the lawyer appointed to defend her. Equally unsurprisingly, sd lawyer decides to go to great lengths to champion her anyway. How often does this latter happen in 'real life'? One wonders. Probably not enuf.
"I sat and glared at the back of her sleek dark head. I couldn't guess what secrets lay coiled inside of it, but I was morally certain that they weren't criminal secrets. Ella lacked the earmarks of the type: the dull-eyed resignation, the wild flares of rebelliousness, the indescribable feral odor of sex that has grown claws." - p 4
I find that description.. interesting.. & somewhat self-contradictory: "dull-eyed resignation" strikes me as contradicting "wild flares of rebelliousness" & "feral odor of sex that has grown claws" is particularly interesting in & of itself: something that's feral is something that's gone from tame back to its natural state of being wild: I suggest that sex is wild to begin w/ & that various forces often seek to tame it.. w/o success. Trying to tame sex is like trying to force trees to grow in the shape of boards, for all I know there's someone working on such a genetic modification idea as I write.. but I don't think it's a good idea.
"The mere idea of detectives at the Foothill Club was incongruous. It was one of those monumentally unpretentious places where you could still imagine that the sun had never set on the international set. It cost five thousand dollars to join, and membership was limited to three hundred. Even if you had the five thousand, you had to wait for one of the members to die. And then take a blood test, for blueness." - p 27
Ha ha! This bk was 1st published in 1960. $5,000 in 1960 wd be worth $44,742.74 in 2021 (according to the CPI Inflation Counter). One might ask: do such expensive clubs actually exist?
"Liberty National Golf Course in Jersey City, NJ
• Initiation fee: $450,000-$500,000; Annual dues: $29,000.
• Across from Manhattan, it has a marina and private vessel for its 200 members. It cost $250 million to build, making it the most expensive golf course ever built." - https://www.helenbrowngroup.com/a-pee...
The above website lists 22 that're "just a glimpse into some of the priciest golf clubs", the example isn't the most exclusive one. One club has a $1,000,000 inititation fee. I asked the internet what country clubs Jeffrey Epstein belonged to but didn't find the answer. I did find a list of his "high society contacts" here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/... . I suppose that if I wanted to pursue that further I cd check to see what country clubs those people belong to but I didn't bother. My personal country club is called my backyard. Then there're the public parks.
What I don't understand is why people hate on Epstein so much at the same time that Fifty Shades of Grey is a best-seller made into a movie? A friend of mine who's a mom gave her coming-of-age daughter a copy of Fifty Shades as a birthday present - wasn't that grooming her to be a masochistic sex slave to wealth & power?
But I di_____.
MacDonald observes some variety of class & culture.
""What else does she say?"
""Nothing. She says a woman is a fool to go to the hospital. Nobody ain't gonna make her. The hospital is where you die, she says. Her sister is a medica."" - p 70
The old woman is poor & Latino. Hence, in mainstream 'white' culture she might be perceived as ignorant for distrusting hospitals. But what if she's wise?
""We won't argue, Colonel. Haven't you ever been to a local doctor?"
""I don't go to doctors. The blasted doctors killed my mother."" - p 102
Now, he's a 'white' guy - but even he too wd be commonly perceived as a fool for rejecting doctors - &, yet, how many of us have had bad experiences w/ 'Western Medicine'? I have. See the "Personal Backstory" chapter of my Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC bk ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... ).
"I sat and watched her, She had reddish-brown hair, but in other respects her resemblance to Holly May was striking. It was a phenomenom I'd noticed before: whole generations of girls looked like the movie actresses of their period. Perhaps they made themselves up to resemble the actresses. Perhaps the actresses made themselves up to embody some common ideal. Or perhaps they became actresses by virtue of the fact that they already resembled the common ideal." - p 112
Think of Betty Page.
Back to the Latino subculture:
""This is Mr. Gunnarson," Padilla said. "He won't give the little one mal ojo. He is a lawyer trying to find out what happened here today."" - p 129
"Mal de ojo is a Spanish term meaning “evil eye,” which is frequently used to refer to a culturally specific illness common in Latin Americans and Latino immigrants in the United States. The origin of mal de ojo has been traced to the Eastern Mediterranean and Greco-Roman traditions, although many variations of this syndrome have existed for thousands of years. The widespread belief of the evil eye in Latin America is credited to the Spanish colonizers who brought it to the continent, amid combinations that resulted from indigenous and folk-healing systems. In Brazil, the equivalent for the evil eye is called “olho gordo” or “mau olhado,” that is translated as “fat eye.” Among Latin American popular cultures mal de ojo is generally believed to be caused by a strong stare full of jealousy, envy, or admiration directed at either vulnerable or perceived weaker individuals such as women or children. Certainly, babies and infants are considered at special risk for the evil eye, given the.." - https://link.springer.com/referencewo...
""Is Mrs. Donato here?"
"Arcadia shook her head. "She went to the albolaria. She says there is a curse on the family which only the albolaria can take off."" - p 130
"Albolario
"Startled person, with little sense." - https://translate.google.com/translat...
"like all the other moms he knew, but boiling down herbs, extracting essences she used as a curandera, an albolaria, a folk healer." - p 247, The Edge of Chaos (fiction) by Pamela McCorduck
Interesting, eh? One online definition has an albolaria as a person w/ little sense while a fictional usage has it meaning what MacDonald apparently intends it to mean: a folk healer.
""Arcadia wants me to stay with her. She put Torres in the clink for nonsupport. Now she's scared to be alone herself. She thinks maybe she's getting susto, too."
""What is susto?"
""Bad sickness. The doctor says it's psychological, like. My mother says it's from an evil spirit."
""Which do you say?"
""I dunno. They taught in high school there was no such thing as evil spirits. But I dunno."" - p 133
"The neon sign of the bars and cafés hung like ignis fatuus on the twilight." - p 131
"In folklore, a will-o'-the-wisp, will-o'-wisp or ignis fatuus (Latin for 'giddy flame', plural ignes fatui), is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. The phenomenon is known in English folk belief, English folklore and much of European folklore by a variety of names, including jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, hinkypunk and hobby lantern and is said to mislead travelers by resembling a flickering lamp or lantern. In literature, will-o'-the-wisp metaphorically refers to a hope or goal that leads one on but is impossible to reach or something one finds sinister and confounding." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%...
MacDonald uses both Spanish & Latin. I'm reminded of Myles na gCopaleen's wonderful column for the Irish Times in wch I recall him using as many as 5 languages in one little piece. Those were the days, eh? Do novelists still dare to tread in such scholarly waters?
I enjoy writing that refers to a wide variety of things - including music, other writing, & the arts. Why not? If I know about what's referred to then there's an enriched image for me, if I don't, then, perhaps I learn something.
"The floodlights were burning outside Ferguson's house, throwing Chirico shadows along the cliff and up the driveway." - p 134
Anyone familiar w/ Giorgio de Chirico's early paintings knows how strong a part the shadows play. They show the striking effect of a sun not seen.
MacDonald doesn't shy from psychological types that some people might prefer to deny the existence of. Take the example of the castrating mother:
"["]I told him about the awful things that can happen to a boy, the disasters and the diseases. He was very meek and mild. He cried in my lap, and he promised that he would be a good boy forever. But he betrayed me, betrayed my confidence in him."
"The cat stood still, like a cat in a frieze, transfixed by her high, thin voice. Its moaning changed to a snarling, and its long tail erected itself.
""Be quiet, Harry, I had the same trouble with you until I had you fixed. Didn't I boy?" she asked liltingly. "But you still love your mother, don't you boy? Eh, Harry?"" - p 146
Of course, there are times when MacDonald seems like an old fuddy-duddy.
"The jukebox was playing rock—music for civilizations to deline by, man." - p 150
Spike Jones hated rock. Then again, I think of the Dadaists as having critiqued civilization as having produced WWI - not everyone sees only the bright side of civilization, it can be a killing machine too. Anyway, this bk's from 1960. What was the rock music of the time? Roy Orbison? Elvis Presley? Chubby Checker? The Everly Brothers? It was too early for the Mothers of Invention, Bonzo Dog Band, pretty much every rock group I've been interested in didn't come along until the mid-'60s & later. Soft Machine, Henry Cow, etc.
"The woman tittered like a broken xylophone. Unkempt as she was, her bleached hair stringy as hemp, her lips bulging in a pair of men's jeans, she dragged at the attention. Her eyes were blowtorch blue in a white, frozen face." - p 167
I deduce that the "lips bulging in a pair of men's jeans" were camel toe - or, in my slang, PVC (Prominent Vulva Crease). Why knock it?
""Don't get panicky now. She's in the nursery, and she's physically perfect. Not to mention precociously intelligent and aware. I can tell by the way she nurses. That makes the problem even more urgent. We have to give her a name, for her to start forming her personality around. We can't simply go on calling her Her, like something out of H. Rider Haggard."" - p 187
The reference being, of course, to Haggard's adventure novel She. Am I being overly explanatory? I just figure that as an ancient being I shd share possibly forgotten lore before I evaporate.
""She'll need the best criminal lawyer and the best psychiatrists your money can procure. They won't be able to get her off, of course, but they can save her from the extreme penalty. No one with strong financial backing is ever executed."" - p 215
Remember money? That was a physical thing that passed from one person to another. People acquired it in all sorts of ways. It's almost the same as what we have today - except that it wasn't quite so easy for the ruling elites to punish & reward.
September 20, 2016
"The problem involved: A Nympho Movie Star - An Alcoholic Millionaire - Ambivalent Cops - Assorted Junkies - Ambulance-Driving Ghouls - An Honest Lawyer - Robbery - Blackmail - Kidnapping - Murder - Only Ross Macdonald can weld all these into one absolutely air-tight mystery that bets the reader he can't solve it before the last breath-taking page!"
(Idiotic and misleading blurb on the back cover of the 1971 printing of a paperback)
The Ferguson Affair (1960) will probably be the last novel in my "Re-read complete Macdonald" project. There exist two early novels that I have not read, but judging by the sub-standard Blue City that comes from the same period and which I have recently reviewed here I have very little interest in reading them. Of course Mr. Macdonald (Kenneth Millar in private life) is known for his extraordinary Lew Archer series, all 18 installments of which I have reviewed on Goodreads. Alas, this stand-alone novel - more of a thriller than a detective story - barely rises to the level of weakest entries in the Archer series.
The story is narrated by Bill Gunnarson, a lawyer in the fictional Southern California town of Buenavista. As a public defender he is assigned one Ella Barker as a client, a nurse in the local hospital, who sold a stolen diamond ring to a local pawnshop. Police - who are trying to nab a notorious burglary gang - want to get to the gang leaders through Ms. Barker, but she is too scared to talk. When Gunnarson begins checking the facts of the case, the pawnshop owner is beaten to death. This forces Ella to reveal the truth at least partially and the lawyer learns about the mysterious Larry Gaines, whom Ella saw with a woman resembling Holly May, a movie actress. The woman is married to a rich Canadian oilman who currently resides in California. The presumed Ms. May and Larry seem to have disappeared together. The case expands and eventually involves more murders.
The rather conventional plot is not really worthy of particular praise. The classical Macdonald motif - past events that cast deep shadows upon the present - is underemphasized. Implausibility of situations and conversations and overuse of coincidence as a plot device substantially weaken the novel. Also, I am not really convinced by any of the characters; they do not have the requisite human depth. Mr. Gunnarson's is a particularly bland characterization, and his total dedication to work at the expense of his wife who is just about to give birth to their first child is not at all believable. I find the first conversation between the spouses totally flat, artificial, and full of clichés. People do not talk like that. The second one is better and adds a little zest.
While I generally dislike plot twists, I have to admit that the first surprise sprung by Mr. Macdonald is superb. The second one, in turn, I find cheap, silly, and unnecessary. And the dramatic, cinematic scene of a sort of shootout should better be forgotten.
But the worst disappointment is the writing. I have not found even a one-sentence example of the great Macdonald prose I got accustomed to look forward to, thus I had to use the moronic cover blurb for the epigraph. Also, the writing reads significantly more dated than in the Archer novels. Sort of a fizzling, sad end to my Macdonald project.
Two stars.
(Idiotic and misleading blurb on the back cover of the 1971 printing of a paperback)
The Ferguson Affair (1960) will probably be the last novel in my "Re-read complete Macdonald" project. There exist two early novels that I have not read, but judging by the sub-standard Blue City that comes from the same period and which I have recently reviewed here I have very little interest in reading them. Of course Mr. Macdonald (Kenneth Millar in private life) is known for his extraordinary Lew Archer series, all 18 installments of which I have reviewed on Goodreads. Alas, this stand-alone novel - more of a thriller than a detective story - barely rises to the level of weakest entries in the Archer series.
The story is narrated by Bill Gunnarson, a lawyer in the fictional Southern California town of Buenavista. As a public defender he is assigned one Ella Barker as a client, a nurse in the local hospital, who sold a stolen diamond ring to a local pawnshop. Police - who are trying to nab a notorious burglary gang - want to get to the gang leaders through Ms. Barker, but she is too scared to talk. When Gunnarson begins checking the facts of the case, the pawnshop owner is beaten to death. This forces Ella to reveal the truth at least partially and the lawyer learns about the mysterious Larry Gaines, whom Ella saw with a woman resembling Holly May, a movie actress. The woman is married to a rich Canadian oilman who currently resides in California. The presumed Ms. May and Larry seem to have disappeared together. The case expands and eventually involves more murders.
The rather conventional plot is not really worthy of particular praise. The classical Macdonald motif - past events that cast deep shadows upon the present - is underemphasized. Implausibility of situations and conversations and overuse of coincidence as a plot device substantially weaken the novel. Also, I am not really convinced by any of the characters; they do not have the requisite human depth. Mr. Gunnarson's is a particularly bland characterization, and his total dedication to work at the expense of his wife who is just about to give birth to their first child is not at all believable. I find the first conversation between the spouses totally flat, artificial, and full of clichés. People do not talk like that. The second one is better and adds a little zest.
While I generally dislike plot twists, I have to admit that the first surprise sprung by Mr. Macdonald is superb. The second one, in turn, I find cheap, silly, and unnecessary. And the dramatic, cinematic scene of a sort of shootout should better be forgotten.
But the worst disappointment is the writing. I have not found even a one-sentence example of the great Macdonald prose I got accustomed to look forward to, thus I had to use the moronic cover blurb for the epigraph. Also, the writing reads significantly more dated than in the Archer novels. Sort of a fizzling, sad end to my Macdonald project.
Two stars.
July 18, 2013
This is actually among my favorite books by Ross Macdonald, which I did not expect at all. It had all of the usual elements of his writing: family disfunction, social issues, robbery and murder, but it was also different in a number of ways-good ways.
The protagonist was a married lawyer of Scandinavian descent; pretty sure I will never write that sentence again. I loved how that lent a new angle to the plot, one that I'm not accustomed to and couldn't predict.
And the allusions and references...I love being able to understand what is being referred to, and it not being some random pop culture aspect. I guess I mean to say that I love how this felt more educated than most books.
There were a few moments when I was annoyed by certain things, like a baby having "masculine kicks," however I think most of them turned out to be integral to the plot, or disproved. Actually, sitting here praising so many aspects and not being able to think of a legitimate complaint, I've had to up this a star.
The protagonist was a married lawyer of Scandinavian descent; pretty sure I will never write that sentence again. I loved how that lent a new angle to the plot, one that I'm not accustomed to and couldn't predict.
And the allusions and references...I love being able to understand what is being referred to, and it not being some random pop culture aspect. I guess I mean to say that I love how this felt more educated than most books.
There were a few moments when I was annoyed by certain things, like a baby having "masculine kicks," however I think most of them turned out to be integral to the plot, or disproved. Actually, sitting here praising so many aspects and not being able to think of a legitimate complaint, I've had to up this a star.
November 6, 2013
Attorney Bill Gunnarson was next up on the list for indigent clients and the young woman he'd got was arrested for selling a stolen ring to a pawn shop dealer. At first, she lied to him and things weren't helped when a watch found in her apartment was also stolen.
He finally got her to start talking and it led him into a kidnapping, same man involved, of the former actress wife of the millionaire Colonel Ferguson. Two hundred thousand was the ransom demand and the old millionaire wanted to pay for his half-his-age wife.
But something wasn't right. Two people involved peripherally turned up dead of suspicious circumstances. Gunnarson gets a threatening phone call to lay off, with an overt threat to his pregnant wife, the wife gets one of those phone calls with the heavy breathing, and He has the wealthy client that pays no attention to anything he says.
Nacdonald throws a few twists along the way to keep you guessing and produced a satisfying read. Before THE FERGUSON AFFAIR, I'd only read his excellent Archer series. May have to change that.
He finally got her to start talking and it led him into a kidnapping, same man involved, of the former actress wife of the millionaire Colonel Ferguson. Two hundred thousand was the ransom demand and the old millionaire wanted to pay for his half-his-age wife.
But something wasn't right. Two people involved peripherally turned up dead of suspicious circumstances. Gunnarson gets a threatening phone call to lay off, with an overt threat to his pregnant wife, the wife gets one of those phone calls with the heavy breathing, and He has the wealthy client that pays no attention to anything he says.
Nacdonald throws a few twists along the way to keep you guessing and produced a satisfying read. Before THE FERGUSON AFFAIR, I'd only read his excellent Archer series. May have to change that.
May 17, 2015
To date the only non-Archer Macdonald book I've read. Enjoyable, and still very much in the Macdonald style, though this one didn't really "do it" for me like the Archers have. Maybe it's because we keep breaking away from the action to get updates on the condition of lawyer/protagonist Bill Gunnarson's pregnant wife - a move that I'm sure was meant to differentiate Gunnarson from Archer (who apparently had no life outside of his cases), but one that doesn't add much to the excitement. Worth looking into, just not quite one of the author's best (and when you're talking about Macdonald, the best is pretty much unmatched).
November 24, 2019
Overall, not my favorite Ross Macdonald. Perhaps it’s the absence of Archer, but this one took me a while to get into. Bill Gunnarson is just not that interesting of a character. Still, it’s an interesting read because this seems more a personal book than others that Macdonald has done. There’s a character struggling with a sense of alienation from being a Canadian living in California, a kidnapping (the authors daughter had been kidnapped a few years before. Those are two examples of a few I picked out I the book. I think average Macdonald is better than most, but if you haven’t read this before, start with The Barbarous Coast or The Ivory Grin.
May 30, 2023
The Ferguson Affair is an unusual Ross MacDonald novel in that the protagonist is a lawyer, Bill Gunnarson, married with a wife who is expecting any day. Gunnarson, an attorney who thinks like a private detective, runs down a number of witnesses to solve a mystery which starts out as a client getting a stolen ring. By the time the plot gets going, maybe a fourth of the way into the tale, Archer's gift for plotting, description, and irony make The Ferguson Affair a closely-woven story that is quite entertaining to read.
October 18, 2013
MacDonald never disappoints. He is in the same league as Hammett, Chandler and Cain. And perhaps only Chandler offers the kind of sparkling prose MacDonald does. Like this:
“The woman tittered like a broken xylophone. Unkempt as she was, her bleached hair stringy as hemp, her hips bulging in a pair of men’s jeans, she dragged at the attention. Her eyes were blowtorch blue in a white, frozen face.”
“The woman tittered like a broken xylophone. Unkempt as she was, her bleached hair stringy as hemp, her hips bulging in a pair of men’s jeans, she dragged at the attention. Her eyes were blowtorch blue in a white, frozen face.”
February 26, 2017
Got off to a slow start with this one, disappointed that it wasn't an Archer book, but oh man, one of the best series of plot twists ever. And there is a reference to Catullus 85 and the words ignis fatuus and acerbly. So good. Recommended for anyone who wants to get started with Macdonald!
June 19, 2014
Three stars because it's Ross Macdonald, but Bill Gunnarson is no replacement for Lew Archer.
August 21, 2015
Somehow...my first Ross Macdonald! Won't be my last!
May 21, 2019
I figured out a couple of the twists, but not all of them. Probably my favorite of Ross Macdonald's books.
Read
April 27, 2020Really great sentences, MacDonald's writing is head and shoulders above most crime novelists. A little too much cultural Freudianism, but typical for his era.
August 18, 2024
This was my first Ross Macdonald (real name Kenneth Millar), and I'll definitely be back for more.
I've read three Raymond Chandlers and four or five Dashiel Hammets, and I think Macdonald is a better writer than both of them, while still upholding the noir flair: example -- "She was finding her armor, hardening her personality against life in jail. Her eyes were as sharp as the edges of broken dreams."
In this standalone novel, separate from his private eye Lew Archer series, defense attorney Bill Gunnarson takes the lead role. He represents a woman caught up in a gambling ring who he believes is innocent, and then discovers that there is a lot more going on than break-ins at rich people's homes, after a man who was fencing the stolen goods is assaulted and dies. In the course of his relentless work, Gunnarson also discovers that a B actress named Holly May is involved with one member of the burglary ring, and that she has disappeared and possibly been kidnapped, after she had married a wealthy Canadian oil tycoon.
Gunnarson is convinced that Holly's role is tied up with her past, which he is able to track down with the help of his intrepid office assistant, and that sends the novel toward its violent, fast-paced conclusion. Is Holly a victim or a co-conspirator? Why have at least three people connected with the burglary ring been killed and who did it?
It's classic gumshoe work, and all the while, Gunnarson and his wife are awaiting the birth of their first child.
I don't want to give away any more of the details, but this was a very compelling read, even if it did throw a lot of its twists into the last 20 pages or so.
Time to explore Mr. Archer.
I've read three Raymond Chandlers and four or five Dashiel Hammets, and I think Macdonald is a better writer than both of them, while still upholding the noir flair: example -- "She was finding her armor, hardening her personality against life in jail. Her eyes were as sharp as the edges of broken dreams."
In this standalone novel, separate from his private eye Lew Archer series, defense attorney Bill Gunnarson takes the lead role. He represents a woman caught up in a gambling ring who he believes is innocent, and then discovers that there is a lot more going on than break-ins at rich people's homes, after a man who was fencing the stolen goods is assaulted and dies. In the course of his relentless work, Gunnarson also discovers that a B actress named Holly May is involved with one member of the burglary ring, and that she has disappeared and possibly been kidnapped, after she had married a wealthy Canadian oil tycoon.
Gunnarson is convinced that Holly's role is tied up with her past, which he is able to track down with the help of his intrepid office assistant, and that sends the novel toward its violent, fast-paced conclusion. Is Holly a victim or a co-conspirator? Why have at least three people connected with the burglary ring been killed and who did it?
It's classic gumshoe work, and all the while, Gunnarson and his wife are awaiting the birth of their first child.
I don't want to give away any more of the details, but this was a very compelling read, even if it did throw a lot of its twists into the last 20 pages or so.
Time to explore Mr. Archer.
February 17, 2025
One wonders why MacDonald chose not to feature his famous detective, Lew Archer, as the hero of this novel, going instead for a one-off: Attorney Bill Gunnarson. Gunnarson draws a pro bono job of defending a young woman accused of being involved with a burglary gang, a seemingly simple case that leads him on a wild ride to multiple murders, a missing Hollywood starlet, an aggrieved husband rolling in Canadian oil money, possibly corrupt cops, and a cast of characters from so many different sides of the tracks you'll need a railroad schedule to keep up. It's the same clash of the richy-rich and poory-poor featured in many MacDonald novels, the same beautiful language, and the same intricate plotting. To top it off, the good-hearted-but-tough Gunnarson is practically indistinguishable from the tough-but-good-hearted Archer, except that he's happily married and expecting a child. Whatever McDonald's reasons, he delivers a top-notch mystery that will keep readers guessing until the end.
December 22, 2020
Just another great entry by a master of the noir genre, it's sufficiently tangled and with red herrings to keep me guessing wrongly until the end. A couple of missteps: the protagonist lawyer is pretty good with his fists -- too good, so despite a hint that he spent time in the armed forces (Korean conflict) I didn't believe that part. And his concern about his pregnant wife was too on-again-off-again for reality; that said, every relationship is different, so I suppose it could be true to someone's life experience. Finally, the familial tangles of the Ferguson women was pretty convenient, and unlikely, to be convincing.
But I liked the writing, the setting, and the character development. I could see this as a film script. And I'm sorry that this is the last Ross Macdonald on my shelves.
But I liked the writing, the setting, and the character development. I could see this as a film script. And I'm sorry that this is the last Ross Macdonald on my shelves.
January 16, 2026
Geen privédetective Lew Archer in dit verhaal, maar advocaat Bill Gunnarson, die achter de snoodaards aangaat. Veel actie, krachtige dialogen en een redelijke plot (wel wat gekunsteld, maar nog net binnen de perken). Macdonald heeft heel wat lof voor zijn werk toegezwaaid gekregen, lees ik voor in het boek. Zo zegt The Atlantic: "Most mystery writers merely write about crime. Ross Macdonald writes about sin." Dat geeft wel aan dat er bij deze schrijver meer dan gemiddeld te halen valt. Dat zie je in de uitwerking van de personages, hun motivaties en hun oordeel over morele kwesties. Robert Parker, mijn favoriete Amerikaanse misdaadauteur, zegt het nog sterker: "It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; het did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe in some small, but mattering way, how to live ... I owe him."
August 21, 2021
'She was very good-looking, and well-preserved for a woman of forty or more.'
So the book has some problems. Tad dated. Before sexy creatures over 40 were the sexiest things of all.
Still, nobody pulls the thread on a ball of yarn quite like Macdonald. Another effort that really could have used Lew; wouldn't have the unnecessary baggage of the negligent husband and the pregnant wife.
Some nice surprises, though, some interesting characters, a bit of a convoluted plot, and only passable prose, for Macdonald. Archer enters next book, I think, and just in time.
So the book has some problems. Tad dated. Before sexy creatures over 40 were the sexiest things of all.
Still, nobody pulls the thread on a ball of yarn quite like Macdonald. Another effort that really could have used Lew; wouldn't have the unnecessary baggage of the negligent husband and the pregnant wife.
Some nice surprises, though, some interesting characters, a bit of a convoluted plot, and only passable prose, for Macdonald. Archer enters next book, I think, and just in time.
September 6, 2024
This is my first Ross Macdonald read. It was OK, but felt a little dated. There was a bit of psychological depth in Ferguson's transformation from invulnerable and domineering to vulnerable and needy, but otherwise it felt like an old fashioned gumshoe thriller, albeit with a lawyer doing the detecting. I understand from other reviews that his Lou Archer books are much better, so I won't give up on him. I was alerted to this author by Donna Leon who, in a BBC interview, recommended him. I love her work, so I'm following it up.
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