Play Book Tag discussion

3.5

If you want to know what the story is about besides that it is a classic, hardboiled detective novel that dates from 1962--so expect women to be written pretty much the way they were in these sorts of novels back then--nothing contemporary about it, read the blurb ;).

This is the first Lew Archer book that I can remember reading (quite possible I've read him before and forgotten), and I liked it better than I thought I would. Truth be told, I read it for the Z,because it was shortish and it was hard to find a book starting with Z I could easily get that I felt like reading this summer. I like it better than the Philip Marlowe books and I didn't even listen to an audiobook, although before I got engrossed in the book I did imagine a hardboiled detective voice in my head to get me in the mood. I almost want to give it 4 stars, but I have a feeling that I read it at just the right time so I'm playing it safe as suspect that at another time it would have been closer to 3 stars, and certainly there were parts that weren't my style of writing.

Clearly, Ross Mcdonald knew how to spin this sort of tale, which isn't generally my cup of tea.