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Lew Archer #2
[(The Drowning Pool)] [ By (author) Ross Macdonald, Introduction by John Banville ] [July, 2012]
When a millionaire matriarch is found floating face-down in the family pool, the prime suspects are her good-for-nothing son and his seductive teenage daughter. In The Drowning Pool, Lew Archer takes this case in the L.A. suburbs and encounters a moral wasteland of corporate greed and family hatred--and sufficient motive for a dozen murders
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First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Ross Macdonald
160 books801 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 359 reviews
February 18, 2019
This is the second book in the Lew Archer series, and with it MacDonald has produced the first of his many first-class mysteries. Archer is hired to track down a writer of blackmail letters, but soon the waters become murkier: someone drowns in an actual pool, and Archer's investigation of the murder reveals how the survivors are caught in an undertow of family wounds and crime.
Archer shows us three effective portraits of women: an upper class lady who tightly controls her passions, her haunted, intellectual daughter, and a femme fatale with shady ties and suspicious motives. In addition, there's an effective study of a young psychopath on the make, a convincing portrait of a working class community being gradually destroyed by the depredations and easy money of recent industrial development, and a suspenseful and exciting account of how Archer escapes from the hydrotherapy room of a bogus psych hospital by creating a unique sort of "drowning pool."
May 18, 2023
it’s rare i consider any detective book in the same league as raymond chandler’s elegantly gritty ‘the big sleep’ or mickey spillane’s pulp masterpiece ‘kiss me deadly’ — but ross macdonalds ‘drowning pool’ has officially entered that rarefied air for me.
nevermind crime fiction or noir, this is great literature plain and simple man. much like chandler (an obvious influence in book one, and as well this second novel) and as well like hammett — ross macdonald manages to quickly carve out a unique voice that already doesn’t feel like a philip marlowe clone anymore. more like a distant and sharper cousin. a casual family friend even. macdonald’s prose here is more muscular than the previous book; with prose like rapid right jabs, followed by unexpected left hooks of melancholy poetry and sudden deep insights.
while i quite like macdonald’s debut ‘moving target’ and even compared his prose to chandler, albeit chandler lite, this second release really is the showstopper of the two and the one i’d recommend to any new lew archer initiate.
it really is a knock out of detective book.
and it stings like heartache.
nevermind crime fiction or noir, this is great literature plain and simple man. much like chandler (an obvious influence in book one, and as well this second novel) and as well like hammett — ross macdonald manages to quickly carve out a unique voice that already doesn’t feel like a philip marlowe clone anymore. more like a distant and sharper cousin. a casual family friend even. macdonald’s prose here is more muscular than the previous book; with prose like rapid right jabs, followed by unexpected left hooks of melancholy poetry and sudden deep insights.
while i quite like macdonald’s debut ‘moving target’ and even compared his prose to chandler, albeit chandler lite, this second release really is the showstopper of the two and the one i’d recommend to any new lew archer initiate.
it really is a knock out of detective book.
and it stings like heartache.
April 18, 2023
Ross Macdonald - a chronicler of the dark secrets of the old rich. Or is he some kind of class enemy who hated rich folk? Every single book of his takes a presidential dump on the idle rich with its last generation unable to break way from the matriarch. Or Macdonald is a sadist who through the sleazebally but also righteous Lew Archer, gazes upon the rich destroying themselves and anyone who comes in their path.
Maude Slocum, married to a no good California heir, arrives at Archers office, reluctantly asking him to investigate the origins of a nasty letter. She seems to be hiding a lot. The investigation takes Archer to Quinto, California where the oil drillers are running amock and twisting the arms of the old rich to sell their land.
The descriptions of both the seedy and luxurious places across Quinto make you wonder why the Paul Newman film was set in Louisiana. The similies are glorious and outrageous. Macdonald does similies as well as Graham Greene.
It is amazing how Macdonald makes Archer a bit of a sleazeball in the way he looks at women, but on the other hand Archer is also righteous as hell when it comes to finding the truth and unveiling the dark stuff that goes on within old rich families.
This is a really good novel. The ending was not as devastating as The Chill. The ending was a bit weak. The final revelation - it was all cleverly stitched up, but felt a bit weak.
Maude Slocum, married to a no good California heir, arrives at Archers office, reluctantly asking him to investigate the origins of a nasty letter. She seems to be hiding a lot. The investigation takes Archer to Quinto, California where the oil drillers are running amock and twisting the arms of the old rich to sell their land.
The descriptions of both the seedy and luxurious places across Quinto make you wonder why the Paul Newman film was set in Louisiana. The similies are glorious and outrageous. Macdonald does similies as well as Graham Greene.
It is amazing how Macdonald makes Archer a bit of a sleazeball in the way he looks at women, but on the other hand Archer is also righteous as hell when it comes to finding the truth and unveiling the dark stuff that goes on within old rich families.
This is a really good novel. The ending was not as devastating as The Chill. The ending was a bit weak. The final revelation - it was all cleverly stitched up, but felt a bit weak.
September 24, 2025
Lew Archer's wit, sarcasm, melancholy, attentiveness to detail and compassion to people are reflected in his narration. It is through Lew Archer's eyes that we observe the characters, their relationships and the American society. But Archer, the narrator is also the main reason why I enjoy reading Macdonald's novels and short stories.
'I felt like a lonely cat, an aging tom ridden by obscure rage, looking for torn-ear trouble.'
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'The happy endings and the biggest oranges were the ones that California saved for export.'
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'You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.'
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'There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.'
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'There's a contradiction in your thinking. If I took your dirty money, you wouldn't be able to trust my honesty.'
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'He had pink butterfly ears. The rest of him was still in the larval stage.'
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'She was much too apologetic for a woman with that figure, in those clothes.'
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'Look,' I said. 'I am rhinoceros-skinned and iron-hearted. I’ve been doing divorce work in L.A. for ten years. If you can tell me anything I haven’t heard, I’ll donate a week’s winnings at Santa Anita to any worthy charity.'
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'The problem was to love people, try to serve them, without wanting anything from them.'
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'And the whole pier rose and fell in stiff and creaking mimicry, dancing its long slow dance of dissolution. I reached the end and saw no one, heard nothing but my footsteps and the creak of the beams, the slap of waves on the pilings. It was a fifteen-foot drop to the dim water. The nearest land ahead of me was Hawaii.'
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'Her eyes, dark brown and experienced, carried a little luggage underneath.'
'I felt like a lonely cat, an aging tom ridden by obscure rage, looking for torn-ear trouble.'
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'The happy endings and the biggest oranges were the ones that California saved for export.'
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'You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.'
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'There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.'
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'There's a contradiction in your thinking. If I took your dirty money, you wouldn't be able to trust my honesty.'
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'He had pink butterfly ears. The rest of him was still in the larval stage.'
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'She was much too apologetic for a woman with that figure, in those clothes.'
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'Look,' I said. 'I am rhinoceros-skinned and iron-hearted. I’ve been doing divorce work in L.A. for ten years. If you can tell me anything I haven’t heard, I’ll donate a week’s winnings at Santa Anita to any worthy charity.'
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'The problem was to love people, try to serve them, without wanting anything from them.'
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'And the whole pier rose and fell in stiff and creaking mimicry, dancing its long slow dance of dissolution. I reached the end and saw no one, heard nothing but my footsteps and the creak of the beams, the slap of waves on the pilings. It was a fifteen-foot drop to the dim water. The nearest land ahead of me was Hawaii.'
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'Her eyes, dark brown and experienced, carried a little luggage underneath.'
February 6, 2017
[9/10]
The eyes were deep blue, with a sort of double vision. They saw you clearly, took you in completely, and at the same time looked beyond you. They had years to look back on, and more things to see in the years than a girl’s eyes had.
Eyes like a deep pool to lure gumshoe Lew Archer to the deep end and drown him. What could be more quintessential hardboiled that a beautiful woman walking into the rundown office of a small-time private investigator and asking for help? I’ve read dozens of novels starting in this manner, yet there is something abour Ross MacDonald that makes me exclaim: ‘This is the gold standard!’ , the high mark I will use in the future to judge the imitators. Yes, I know I feel about the same about Chandler and Hammett, but there was something, like planets and stars coming into alignment, that made the second book in the Archer series much better than “The Moving Target”, which I called derivative and a trifle unoriginal. I am starting now to think that the reason I feel these stories are predictable and standard noir fare is because they have been imitated so many times, by so many aspiring writers.
So, where does Lew Archer positions himself in the private gumshoe business? Somewhere between the cynical, pragmatic Continental Op. and the more idealistic, knightly Marlowe – a combination of the two atitudes that gives Archer both a consience and a world weary depression, not unlike the image he sees reflected in the cheap mirror of a hooker’s trailer house:
The man in the mirror was big and flat-bodied, and lean-faced. One of his gray eyes was larger than the other, and it swelled and wavered like the eye of conscience: the other eye was little, hard and shrewd. It stood still for an instant, caught by my own distorted face, and the room reversed itself like a trick drawing in a psychological test. For an instant I was the man in the mirror, the shadow figure without a life of his own who peered with one large eye and one small eye through dirty glass at the dirty lives of people in a very dirty world.
“It’s kind of cramped,” she said, trying to be cheerful, “but we call it home sweet home.”
The quote above may be an indicator of why MacDonald doesn’t enjoy quite the same renown as his contemporaries Chandler and Hammet : writing about suburban posh lives in the early fifties, his uncompromising novels are a direct attack of the budding American Dream of prosperity and happy families living in charming homes. Maude Slocum, the woman knocking on Lew Archer’s door, is one such member of the California elite – she has looks, money and self-confidence to sail through the years without a storm in sight. And yet, there she is, slumming, reinforcing Archer’s convictions that everything is rot under the glitter :
She was much too apologetic for a woman with that figure, in those clothes.
“Look,” I said. “I am rhinoceros-skinned and iron-hearted. I’ve been doing divorce work in L.A. for ten years. If you can tell me anything I haven’t heard, I’ll donate a week’s winnings at Santa Anita to any worthy charity.”
“And you can whip your weight in wildcats, Mr. Archer?”
“Wildcats terrify me, but people are worse.”
Archer takes the case : at first glance a simple blackmail investigation, soon to get upgraded to a murder case when he arrives at the Slocum mansion, a rich house on top a beautiful mesa outside L.A., with extensive gardens and an outside pool of cerrulean blue. A wiser man might have walked away from the wild menagerie that the finds inside the house, but Archer is interested in more than money:
“What makes you so persistent?”
“Curiosity, I guess. I’m getting interested in the case. It’s quite an interesting setup you’ve got here; I’ve never seen a fishline with more tangles.”
The plot is typical of the late forties hardboiled, so convoluted and venal that soon everybody is a suspect, including but not limited to: a husband with acting aspirations, a mother-in-law who holds tight to the purse strings, a sultry teenage daughter, a gigolo chauffeur, a gay theatre director, a fat man with connections to the criminal underworld, a floozy waitress in a rundown bar, a bombshell blonde in an exclusive club, a bodyguard built like a brickhouse, a corrupt policeman. It’s pointless trying to unravel the plot threads in my review, both because one couldn’t avoid spoilers and because the real point of the novel is not ‘whodunit’ but what drove that person or person to crime. This psychological angle is another signature feature that separates MacDonald from his peers.
I don’t know what justice is. Truth interest me, though. Not general truth if there is any, but the truth of particular things. Who did what when why. Especially why.
Since I chose not to go into details about plot (although I might mention that I was a tad disappointed by how many times our gumshoe got knocked out senseless by the bad guys), I thought I would entice potential readers with a few examples of the surprisingly poetic turn of phrase and introspective moments that balance the bloody fists and the gun action.
On the subject of the detective as a voyeur, of the call of the night that is so strong in some people’s lives:
I felt like a lonely cat, an aging tom ridden by obscure rage, looking for torn-ear trouble. I clipped that pitch off short and threw it away. Night streets were my territory, and would be till I rolled in the last gutter.
On empathy and the need to make an effort, no matter how steep the climb from the bottom:
“Now that you know where I live, come and see me sometime.”
The old words started an echo that lasted fifty miles. The night was murmurous with the voices of girls who threw their youth away and got the screaming meemies at three or four a.m.
On being ready with a witty repartee when meeting shallow, rich ladies:
“I so love creme de menthe; it’s such a pretty drink, and I always drink it when I wear my emeralds.”
“I always eat oyster stew when I wear my pearls,” I said.
Speaking of rich people, glitter, and looking in from the sidelines, here’s a scene from a Slocum party:
I listened to them talk. Existentialism, they said. Henry Miller and Truman Capote and Henry Moore. Andre Gide and Anais Nin and Djuna Barnes. And sex – hard-boiled, poached, coddled, shirred, and fried easy over in fresh creamery butter. Sex solo, in duet, trio, quartet; for all-male chorus; for choir and symphony; and played on the harpsichord in three-fourths time. And Albert Schweitzer and the dignity of everything that lives.
Sex makes the world go round, and Archer is no monkish puritan, even if he does exhibit remarkable restraint when hot women fall into his arms, like sirens luring him into the deep with their song:
Her gray eyes were crepuscular. The lashes came down over them like sudden night. Her mouth was dark and glistening. I kissed her, felt her toe press on my instep, her hand move on my body. I drew back from the whirling vortex that had opened, the drowning pool. She wriggled and sighed, and went to sleep in my arms.
In another place, another pair of eyes you can drown in:
There was night in her voice, in her eyes, night caught like mist in her hair.
Archer will eventually ‘solve’ the case, in his own particular way, more interested in real people than in blind justice. He will need another of his favorite solitary swims in the Pacific ocean – the only place left unspoiled by human greed and dirty secrets – to cleanse the bitterness and the sleaziness of the Slocum case off his skin.
I sat over a third cup of coffee and thought about Maude Slocum. Hers was one of those stories without villains or heroes. There was no one to admire, no one to blame. Everyone had done wrong for himself and others. Everyone had failed. Everyone had suffered.
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I was tempted to give this episode five stars, but I finally settled for four and a half, considering some minor plot inconsistencies and hearing from some friends that the next Archer books are even better. I hope I fill find time to schedule the next installment soon.
December 9, 2023
"Please don't be nasty, Archer. What's your first name, anyway?"
"Lew. You can call me Archer."
I think I enjoyed this novel even more than the previous Lew Archer entry, The Moving Target .
It starts out very slowly.
An attractive woman in her late 30's shows up at Archer's office. She's intercepted a threatening letter addressed to her husband alleging an extra-marital affair the woman, Maude Slocum, has had with an unknown male.
Mrs. Slocum is reluctant to share much more information with Archer. Which of course annoys the hell out of Archer.
"...I am rhinoceros-skinned and iron hearted. I've been doing divorce work in L.A. for ten years. If you can tell me anything I haven't heard, I'll donate a week's winnings at Santa Anita to any worthy charity."
The hell? I thought Archer claimed he didn't handle divorce cases in the first novel!
On a personal note, we learn in this novel that Archer's been divorced from his wife "Sue" for a little over a year.
Eventually, Archer convinces Maude Slocum to allow him to visit her home and meet all of the likely suspects. It's a grueling read of 4 or 5 short chapters (40-something pages) that follow. So many characters, a couple of obvious suspects, it'll be another 10 pages or so before the first murder occurs. After that hold on to your wig-hats. The pace quickens and the suspense intensifies with intermittent violence and gun play. Archer is frequently knocked unconscious or severely beaten.
"You're not a Hollywood personage, are you?"
"I've done a good deal of work in and about Hollywood. Peeping on fleabag hotel rooms, untying marital knots, blackmailing blackmailers out of business. Dirty, heavy, hot work on occasion.”
In pursuit of possible culprits, Archer takes another of his usual walks on the sleazy side of town:
The building was pink stucco, big and new and ugly. It had a side entrance with "Romp Room" lettered above it in red neon. The wall was blind except for the door and a couple of round screened ventilators. I could hear the noise of the romping from the outside: the double-time beat of the band, the shuffling of many feet. When I pulled the heavy door open, the noise blasted my ears... The rest of the noise came from the booths that lined three walls of the room, and from the dance-floor in the middle where twenty or thirty couples whirled in the smoke. The high titter of drunk and flattered women, the animal sounds of drunk and eager men. Babel with a wild jazz obbligato.
From that rock-house of a bar in the fictional new oil-rich town of Quinto, California, Archer follows a thread that leads him to Los Angeles:
I stopped at a lunch-bar east of the cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, for a sandwich and coffee and a look at the telephone book. It hung by a chain from the pay telephone on the wall beside the front window... I dialed the number and watched the sidewalk roamers. The young hepcats high on music or weed, the middle-aged men on the town, the tourists waiting for something to fulfill their fantasies, the hopeful floozies and the despairing ones, the quick, light, ageless grifters walked the long Hollywood beat on the other side of the plate glass. The sign above the window was red on one side, green on the other, so that they passed from ruddy youth to sickly age as they crossed my segment of sidewalk, from green youth to apoplexy.
I just finished this novel last night and already I miss it and the pathetic cast of characters that populate the book.
It's not better than Chandler. It's minor key "Marlowe" in pretentious major.
Archer is just as tough as Marlowe but he thinks too much and he's a judgemental monk in search of his own private monastery.
The action scenes are really well executed -no idea who Macdonald lifted those bits from.
In the end, despite the overall melancholy atmosphere that Archer seems to exist in, I'm finding myself impressed with Macdonald's writing and I really like this private detective Lew Archer character.
...one of those stories without villains or heroes. There was no one to admire, no one to blame. Everyone had done wrong for himself and others. Everyone had failed. Everyone had suffered.
March 4, 2024
An early Archer novel and my first. In the style of Chandler/Marlowe, without quite reaching those heights. A brisk, enjoyable read that follows the standard template of the private eye genre and does it very well.
September 20, 2014
An easy read, full of descriptions of seedy places and seedier goings on, Archer is always quick with a quip and a smart simile or metaphor but it all feels so perfunctory; twist here, contrivance there, two-faced dame, crooked police, lying client, woman in peril, a couple of thugs for the protagonist to beat up, corporate mogul villain, two separate plots tie magically together by the end. Not a classic by a mile.
October 31, 2012
I’m such a fan of hard-boiled; can’t seem to get enough of it. This is only my second Ross Macdonald and enjoyed it as much as the first. That translates to a lot, mucho, beaucoup, πολλά, multus, הרבה, viele!
It’s the writing, I know, so clean, sparse is the word I like to use. The dialogue is on target, always, the plot is such that the reader is never sure who the bad guys are since they keep flipping, excepting Lew Archer, P.I., of course, private investigator extraordinaire.
While other P.I.’s are loaded with personal issues, Lew flies high above his or simply doesn’t find them heavy enough here to share with the reader. In this book anyway. And others may be burdened by the come hither look of beautiful women, Archer can smell trouble a mile away even in a beautiful face and body and acts (or not) accordingly.
And he’s always on the straight and narrow, never compromising his core moral values; reporting to the authorities when he sees the law is broken albeit perhaps not as quickly as the guy on the street.
The ending was fantastic, in that it was so convoluted. I was saying to myself and at times, out loud, “Wow, didn’t see that coming!”
Hope to read as many of the old masters, such as Cain (various protagonists), Hammitt (Sam Spade), Chandler (Phillip Marlowe), and this great author, Ross Macdonald. They’re the early detective books and considered hard-boiled. Fortunately for us, the readers, these writers set the bar high for contemporary authors such as Robert Crais(Elvis Cole, P.I.); Robert B. Parker (who died January 18, 2010, at his desk by the way, working on another book) and whose main character is Spenser, PI; Michael Connelly, creator of Harry Bosch, a police detective. Of course this is not a comprehensive list but those off the top of my head when thinking about the genre itself.
And the book, which was published in 1950 seems as up to date, fresh as something written this year. Good, solid writing never goes out of style.
It’s the writing, I know, so clean, sparse is the word I like to use. The dialogue is on target, always, the plot is such that the reader is never sure who the bad guys are since they keep flipping, excepting Lew Archer, P.I., of course, private investigator extraordinaire.
While other P.I.’s are loaded with personal issues, Lew flies high above his or simply doesn’t find them heavy enough here to share with the reader. In this book anyway. And others may be burdened by the come hither look of beautiful women, Archer can smell trouble a mile away even in a beautiful face and body and acts (or not) accordingly.
And he’s always on the straight and narrow, never compromising his core moral values; reporting to the authorities when he sees the law is broken albeit perhaps not as quickly as the guy on the street.
The ending was fantastic, in that it was so convoluted. I was saying to myself and at times, out loud, “Wow, didn’t see that coming!”
Hope to read as many of the old masters, such as Cain (various protagonists), Hammitt (Sam Spade), Chandler (Phillip Marlowe), and this great author, Ross Macdonald. They’re the early detective books and considered hard-boiled. Fortunately for us, the readers, these writers set the bar high for contemporary authors such as Robert Crais(Elvis Cole, P.I.); Robert B. Parker (who died January 18, 2010, at his desk by the way, working on another book) and whose main character is Spenser, PI; Michael Connelly, creator of Harry Bosch, a police detective. Of course this is not a comprehensive list but those off the top of my head when thinking about the genre itself.
And the book, which was published in 1950 seems as up to date, fresh as something written this year. Good, solid writing never goes out of style.
May 12, 2023
11/2020
From 1950
A satisfying mystery. All about family, as is always said of Ross Macdonald. In this, he shows his environmental sensitivity. Talking about how California was built over wilderness (in 1950). And about the sneaky oil companies going after property.
From 1950
A satisfying mystery. All about family, as is always said of Ross Macdonald. In this, he shows his environmental sensitivity. Talking about how California was built over wilderness (in 1950). And about the sneaky oil companies going after property.
December 6, 2022
"I felt like a lonely cat, an aging tom ridden by obscure rage, looking for torn-ear trouble. I clipped that pitch off short & threw it away. Night streets were my territory, and would be till I rolled in the last gutter."
Another excellent Lew Archer novel.
Another excellent Lew Archer novel.
June 12, 2024
Lew Archer, Ross MacDonald’s private eye creation has appeared in 18 novels over a number of decades from 1949 to 1976. MacDonald’s real name is Kenneth Millar and he was married to crime fiction writer, Margaret Miller, making a power couple in fiction writing. The Drowning Pool (1950) was book two in the series, which was made into a 1975 movie starring Paul Newman.
We don’t learn a great deal about who Archer is except that he is world-weary, that he is divorced, and that ultimately he investigates because he believes in truth and wants the truth to come out even if it causes a ruckus. Although his office in his Los Angeles, the case is set for the most part (although there are scenes in Los Angeles and Las Vegas) in Quinto and Nopal Valley, two made-up places that do not necessarily correspond to much on the map except we learn that they are north of Santa Monica, that Quinto has a port, and that Nopal Valley has oil, much perhaps on several large estates.
The story opens with Archer in his office and a nervous client approaching him. We get an understanding of who this client is well before we get her name (Maude Slocum): “If you didn’t look at her face she was less than thirty, quick-bodied and slim as a girl. Her clothing drew attention to the fact: a tailored sharkskin suit and high heels that tensed her nylon-shadowed calves.” We learn that she stands in the doorway nibbling her teeth and clutching her black suede purse. “Her stance was awkward with urgency.”
The case involves – at least initially- a letter threatening to expose Maude’s extramarital affair to her husband, the one with an unmanned voice, like a hysterical boy who Maude refers to as a “whining jellyfish.” Her husband’s mother controls “the money” in the family and would just as well be rid of Maude. It is imperative that it be kept from everyone, including Maude’s teenage daughter, Cathy, who is caught fooling around with Pat Reavis, the sometime shofar. Reavis, we are told, “had quantities of raw charm. But underneath it there was something lacking. I could talk to him all night and never find his core, because he never found it.”
Ultimately, Lew Archer novels are not so much about the spats among wealthy family members or the crooked developers who nose their way in so much as they are about characters and who they are at their core. Archer, at his core, isn’t just a gun for hire. He ultimately wants to do the right thing though he is tempted at times to waltz down to Acapulco with the latest ash-blonde temptress in need of a knight in shining armor. This blonde was Mrs. Mavis Kilbourne and “[h]er atmosphere was like pure oxygen; if you breathed it deep it could make you dizzy and gay, or poison you.”
Were he to succumb to such temptation though would he still be the Archer we know or will he have lost something along the way. Or is he just as he wonders at one point simply a shadow-figure in the mirror “without a life of his own who peered with one large eye and one small eye through dirty glasses at the dirty lives of people in a very dirty world.”
Even back in 1950, MacDonald, through his cipher, Archer, muses on how built up Southern California had become with jerrybuilt beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate and superhighways bulldozed through the mountains, cutting down a thousand years of redwood growth. In this vein, he sounds like his namesake John D. MacDonald with Travis McGee talking about how Florida was overbuilt. “There is nothing wrong with Southern California,” we are told, “that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.” When he says this, though, you wonder if he is talking about the excess development or about the empty petty people and their twisted rotten lives.
We don’t learn a great deal about who Archer is except that he is world-weary, that he is divorced, and that ultimately he investigates because he believes in truth and wants the truth to come out even if it causes a ruckus. Although his office in his Los Angeles, the case is set for the most part (although there are scenes in Los Angeles and Las Vegas) in Quinto and Nopal Valley, two made-up places that do not necessarily correspond to much on the map except we learn that they are north of Santa Monica, that Quinto has a port, and that Nopal Valley has oil, much perhaps on several large estates.
The story opens with Archer in his office and a nervous client approaching him. We get an understanding of who this client is well before we get her name (Maude Slocum): “If you didn’t look at her face she was less than thirty, quick-bodied and slim as a girl. Her clothing drew attention to the fact: a tailored sharkskin suit and high heels that tensed her nylon-shadowed calves.” We learn that she stands in the doorway nibbling her teeth and clutching her black suede purse. “Her stance was awkward with urgency.”
The case involves – at least initially- a letter threatening to expose Maude’s extramarital affair to her husband, the one with an unmanned voice, like a hysterical boy who Maude refers to as a “whining jellyfish.” Her husband’s mother controls “the money” in the family and would just as well be rid of Maude. It is imperative that it be kept from everyone, including Maude’s teenage daughter, Cathy, who is caught fooling around with Pat Reavis, the sometime shofar. Reavis, we are told, “had quantities of raw charm. But underneath it there was something lacking. I could talk to him all night and never find his core, because he never found it.”
Ultimately, Lew Archer novels are not so much about the spats among wealthy family members or the crooked developers who nose their way in so much as they are about characters and who they are at their core. Archer, at his core, isn’t just a gun for hire. He ultimately wants to do the right thing though he is tempted at times to waltz down to Acapulco with the latest ash-blonde temptress in need of a knight in shining armor. This blonde was Mrs. Mavis Kilbourne and “[h]er atmosphere was like pure oxygen; if you breathed it deep it could make you dizzy and gay, or poison you.”
Were he to succumb to such temptation though would he still be the Archer we know or will he have lost something along the way. Or is he just as he wonders at one point simply a shadow-figure in the mirror “without a life of his own who peered with one large eye and one small eye through dirty glasses at the dirty lives of people in a very dirty world.”
Even back in 1950, MacDonald, through his cipher, Archer, muses on how built up Southern California had become with jerrybuilt beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate and superhighways bulldozed through the mountains, cutting down a thousand years of redwood growth. In this vein, he sounds like his namesake John D. MacDonald with Travis McGee talking about how Florida was overbuilt. “There is nothing wrong with Southern California,” we are told, “that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.” When he says this, though, you wonder if he is talking about the excess development or about the empty petty people and their twisted rotten lives.
June 23, 2022
I read this on a plane a couple weeks ago, no wifi for awhile afterwards, so am still catching up on my reviews. It's not fault of the much respected Macdonald that I read this sandwiched between one of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels and one of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe novels. I think of them as in the top five or so of mystery/detective/thriller writers I've read, so in comparison--and it's an early Archer; he's supposed to get much better--Macdonald so far pales for me.
And many reviewers I see think of him as writing in part with Chandler as his mentor. Archer, like Marlowe, is a world-weary loner, woman-crazy, and very clever, very witty. OKay, not as good, and he'd be the first to admit it, but he'd also agree I think that Archer is a very good character for all of the above reasons. How many Marlowes can there be in the world?
In this one we have a woman who wants to stop the blackmail letters her husband has been getting, and a woman--no surprise here--drowns in a pool, and Archer has his own pool peril to escape. It's good! Solid! I might read the next ones or at the least search for what y'all think are the best ones.
And many reviewers I see think of him as writing in part with Chandler as his mentor. Archer, like Marlowe, is a world-weary loner, woman-crazy, and very clever, very witty. OKay, not as good, and he'd be the first to admit it, but he'd also agree I think that Archer is a very good character for all of the above reasons. How many Marlowes can there be in the world?
In this one we have a woman who wants to stop the blackmail letters her husband has been getting, and a woman--no surprise here--drowns in a pool, and Archer has his own pool peril to escape. It's good! Solid! I might read the next ones or at the least search for what y'all think are the best ones.
March 6, 2022
The second installment in the celebrated Lew Archer series seems more comfortable in its own skin than its predecessor; less of a feel of warmed-over Raymond Chandler and more of a thoughtful exploration of post-war southern California's false promises of sunny beaches and glittering nightclubs. Corruption lurks beneath the surface in every setting, from wealthy families with their spoiled children to self-interested law enforcement officials to local workers and merchants teetering between survival and success. The series is unquestionably the spiritual heir to the works of Dashiell Hammett (Archer's surname is taken from Sam Spade's deceased partner) and Chandler (whose Philip Marlowe series overlapped the Archer series for a few years) and is often named as one of the genre's finest, perhaps even its pinnacle.
July 19, 2020
This started slow - took about a quarter of the book to get interesting, then slowed again for before taking off into a page turner. It had similar structure Archer #1 in that there was a wife who wanted a matter related to her husband investigated and there was a daughter who was entangled with the chauffer. The chauffer in Archer #1 happened to pilot planes. Things became more complicated with each murder. I don't often picture characters in roles but I visualized Lauren Bacall playing Mavis and Peter Lorre her unloving husband. There seemed to be a lot of unloving husbands in this story.
April 7, 2022
I'm on a Ross Macdonald bender. He's such a great writer of mean, sharp similes - his writing really sings to me.
It's easy to like Lew Archer, he's a little bit bent but not enough to skew the moral compass of the novel. My only discomfort with this novel was the obvious homophobia - different place and time, I guess. I docked a star for this, but then I gave it back at the novel's climax. I really don't believe that in all the Lew Archer books I've read he has ever been in such great and unusual peril as he was in this novel. I appreciated the raised stakes. How would our hero get out of this one??
It's easy to like Lew Archer, he's a little bit bent but not enough to skew the moral compass of the novel. My only discomfort with this novel was the obvious homophobia - different place and time, I guess. I docked a star for this, but then I gave it back at the novel's climax. I really don't believe that in all the Lew Archer books I've read he has ever been in such great and unusual peril as he was in this novel. I appreciated the raised stakes. How would our hero get out of this one??
May 19, 2021
Jó fej ez az Archer. Alapvetően. Egyszerű, de kemény, mint a napon hagyott teszkós zsemle (csak kevésbé morzsál). Az igazság neki az oxigén, következésképpen 1.) ha hazudik, akkor az konkrétan fáj neki (bár ettől függetlenül időnként hazudik, mert az igazságig néha muszáj keresztül hazudni magunkat) 2.) sűrűn előfordul vele, hogy a megbízói már hagynák a pitlibe az egész ügyet, de ő csak akkor kezd ráérezni az ízére, és bulldogként kapaszkodik bele (ennek köszönhetően magánnyomozói ténykedése gyakran nemhogy nullszaldós, de veszteséges). Szóval tipikusan kellemes noir privát kopóról beszélünk. Egyetlen hibája, hogy úgy viselkedik, mintha Philip Marlowe frusztrált öccse lenne, aki folyvást azon erőlködik, hogy kitörjön a bratyó árnyékából: olyan igyekezettel tolja a szarkasztikus Grál Lovag szerepét, hogy az már néha modorosságnak tűnhet*. Ez az Archer feszül neki egy látszólag szimpla zsarolási ügynek a napfényes, olajtól bűzlő Kaliforniában, hogy aztán szügyig a mocsokban találja magát.
(Bizony, bizony, a zafírszemű Paul Newman elevenítette meg a figurát a mozivásznon.)
Különben meg az van, hogy szerintem a noir krimi a munkásosztály reakciója az Amerikai Álomra. Hőse, a noir detektív azon túl, hogy magányos, tulajdonképpen virtigli proli is, csak épp nem egy detroiti autógyárban gályázik, hanem magánnyomozói praxisban** (***). Pénze az nincs, ambíciója se, de cserébe olyan erős kanti imperatívuszt birtokol, hogy az elég lenne egy egész közép-kelet-európai banánköztársaságnak az életerős demokráciát működtetéséhez. Ő az, aki Bear Gryllsként elvisz minket a gazdagok rothadásszagú dzsungelébe, ami sokkal rothadásszagúbb és ocsmányabb, mint az el tudnánk képzelni. Mert ebben a világban aki szegény, az legfeljebb hibázik, amit tesz, végső soron megbocsátható - de aki gazdag, az romlott a velejéig. Még jó, hogy itt vannak nekünk az Archerek és Marlowe-ok, hogy kicsit helyettünk is megszorongassák a töküket.
* Gyanakszom, hogy ez részben a picit suta fordításnak is betudható.
** És bizonyos értelemben proli maga a krimiszerző is, az irodalom prolija, akit a kiadó rabláncon tart, hogy futószalagon gyártassa vele az újabb és újabb címeket, gyakran olyan tempóban, ami a minőség rovására megy. Szerencsétlen pedig arról álmodik, hogy majd Hollywood észreveszi igyekezetét, és egy zsíros szerződéssel kiemeli a taposómalomból.
*** Batman ezért is nem igazi noir detektív, bár nyilván sokat merít a műfajból, különösen annak atmoszférájából. Bruce Wayne ugyanis a gazdagság és a tőke maga, jobbára ellenfelei azok, akik a perifériáról törekszenek felfelé. Ezzel pedig a Denevérember mítosza tulajdonképpen kifordítja és kiheréli a noir lényegét, csak külsődleges vonásait őrizve meg.
(Bizony, bizony, a zafírszemű Paul Newman elevenítette meg a figurát a mozivásznon.)
Különben meg az van, hogy szerintem a noir krimi a munkásosztály reakciója az Amerikai Álomra. Hőse, a noir detektív azon túl, hogy magányos, tulajdonképpen virtigli proli is, csak épp nem egy detroiti autógyárban gályázik, hanem magánnyomozói praxisban** (***). Pénze az nincs, ambíciója se, de cserébe olyan erős kanti imperatívuszt birtokol, hogy az elég lenne egy egész közép-kelet-európai banánköztársaságnak az életerős demokráciát működtetéséhez. Ő az, aki Bear Gryllsként elvisz minket a gazdagok rothadásszagú dzsungelébe, ami sokkal rothadásszagúbb és ocsmányabb, mint az el tudnánk képzelni. Mert ebben a világban aki szegény, az legfeljebb hibázik, amit tesz, végső soron megbocsátható - de aki gazdag, az romlott a velejéig. Még jó, hogy itt vannak nekünk az Archerek és Marlowe-ok, hogy kicsit helyettünk is megszorongassák a töküket.
* Gyanakszom, hogy ez részben a picit suta fordításnak is betudható.
** És bizonyos értelemben proli maga a krimiszerző is, az irodalom prolija, akit a kiadó rabláncon tart, hogy futószalagon gyártassa vele az újabb és újabb címeket, gyakran olyan tempóban, ami a minőség rovására megy. Szerencsétlen pedig arról álmodik, hogy majd Hollywood észreveszi igyekezetét, és egy zsíros szerződéssel kiemeli a taposómalomból.
*** Batman ezért is nem igazi noir detektív, bár nyilván sokat merít a műfajból, különösen annak atmoszférájából. Bruce Wayne ugyanis a gazdagság és a tőke maga, jobbára ellenfelei azok, akik a perifériáról törekszenek felfelé. Ezzel pedig a Denevérember mítosza tulajdonképpen kifordítja és kiheréli a noir lényegét, csak külsődleges vonásait őrizve meg.
October 28, 2012
This is the second novel by Ross Macdonald I've read and I'm not really impressed. He can write - there are some great descriptions, some witty observations and quips, even a few similes that aspire to Chandlerian status. But the plot is all over the place and I'm not sure the prose makes up for it as it does in Chandler's best novels. There's a lot of woman-hating dressed up as condescending chivalry and Macdonald's depiction of a pair of crypto-gays (he never comes right out and says that's what they are)is cliched and shallow, especially weighed against Archer recalling his father's friend's scent of 'clean masculine sweat' (what the fuck is clean sweat?) and other bits of manly-man romanticism like the final bout of fisticuffs with a local police chief. On the other hand, there are some stunning moments like Archer's escape from a hydrotherapy clinic lock-up and the masterfully conjured squalid atmosphere conjured in his examination of a murder suspect's boarding-house room. But the more I think of it, the more objections and niggles I find to pile up against the good points so I'm going to just say that I found it readable and reasonably diverting and leave it at that.
August 5, 2019
I have read the PI Lew Archer books since I was a kid. I recently saw (and enjoyed) the movie version of this one. Paul Newman who's called "Harper" plays Lew. So, I decided to read the book, which has parallels with the movie. At any rate, Lew in this outing is a more wistful, sad, and relentless character than I remember him as. There were points in the plot where I'd've just walked away from the whole deal. But Lew is a different kind of a guy. The Drowning Pool is a good, solid hardboiled read with wonderful descriptions of the California setting.
Read
August 11, 2016Maybe a 3.75 on this one. The Drowning Pool is Ross Macdonald's second book in his Lew Archer series, but it's my first foray into this author's work. After this book, I think that Archer is a guy I will enjoy reading more about. With eighteen series novels and two short story collections, there's a lot about this world-weary gumshoe to explore.
Lew Archer is called upon to investigate an anonymous poison pen letter sent to his client, Maude Slocum. Maude's beyond worried about her mother-in-law, Olivia, finding any more letters that might be sent, since she, her husband James, and their daughter Cathy are reliant upon Olivia's financial support and live in her house. Archer's been given very little to go on, but he wangles an invitation to a party at Mrs. Slocum's house, allowing him to size up both the situation and the people who attend, one of whom just might be the letter writer. When he decides to call it quits for the night, he takes himself and a fellow passenger he's picked up near the house down to a bar in an oil-rich California town called Nopal Valley, only to be picked up as part of a murder investigation, since it seems that Olivia has drowned in the backyard swimming pool. As it turns out, Archer was the last to see her alive, so the police really want to talk to him. But Olivia's death is merely the tip of this iceberg of a case, and as Archer soon discovers, only the beginning of a number of deaths that ensue as he doggedly tries to get to the truth.
The Drowning Pool must have caused quite a stir when published in 1950, with its crystal-clear references to homosexuality, prostitution, dysfunctional families, and illicit sex. Macdonald also explores the corporate world here along with the rich and extremely powerful people who inhabit it, and the defacing of once beautiful California landscapes.
Character-wise, Archer is intriguing. He hates phonies. He's on the front lines of understanding what human beings can do to themselves and to each other, but at the same time, he demonstrates compassion and empathy when people open up to him about their troubles. He says in this story that he doesn't know what justice is, but
"Truth interests me, though. Not general truth if there is any, but the truth of particular things. Who did what when why."
and in this book, his need to get to the "truth of particular things" lands him in hot water more than once, but he never stops looking until the end. Speaking of the end, I'm not so sure it's the best ending this book could have had, but as Archer himself notes, "The happy endings and the biggest oranges were the ones that California saved for export."
I love discovering "new" authors, and I liked The Drowning Pool enough to merit another go at Macdonald. The plot is heavy and convoluted, but well worth it in the long run. Recommended mainly to readers of hard-boiled fiction, but people looking to connect with classic American crime fiction will like this one as well.
Lew Archer is called upon to investigate an anonymous poison pen letter sent to his client, Maude Slocum. Maude's beyond worried about her mother-in-law, Olivia, finding any more letters that might be sent, since she, her husband James, and their daughter Cathy are reliant upon Olivia's financial support and live in her house. Archer's been given very little to go on, but he wangles an invitation to a party at Mrs. Slocum's house, allowing him to size up both the situation and the people who attend, one of whom just might be the letter writer. When he decides to call it quits for the night, he takes himself and a fellow passenger he's picked up near the house down to a bar in an oil-rich California town called Nopal Valley, only to be picked up as part of a murder investigation, since it seems that Olivia has drowned in the backyard swimming pool. As it turns out, Archer was the last to see her alive, so the police really want to talk to him. But Olivia's death is merely the tip of this iceberg of a case, and as Archer soon discovers, only the beginning of a number of deaths that ensue as he doggedly tries to get to the truth.
The Drowning Pool must have caused quite a stir when published in 1950, with its crystal-clear references to homosexuality, prostitution, dysfunctional families, and illicit sex. Macdonald also explores the corporate world here along with the rich and extremely powerful people who inhabit it, and the defacing of once beautiful California landscapes.
Character-wise, Archer is intriguing. He hates phonies. He's on the front lines of understanding what human beings can do to themselves and to each other, but at the same time, he demonstrates compassion and empathy when people open up to him about their troubles. He says in this story that he doesn't know what justice is, but
"Truth interests me, though. Not general truth if there is any, but the truth of particular things. Who did what when why."
and in this book, his need to get to the "truth of particular things" lands him in hot water more than once, but he never stops looking until the end. Speaking of the end, I'm not so sure it's the best ending this book could have had, but as Archer himself notes, "The happy endings and the biggest oranges were the ones that California saved for export."
I love discovering "new" authors, and I liked The Drowning Pool enough to merit another go at Macdonald. The plot is heavy and convoluted, but well worth it in the long run. Recommended mainly to readers of hard-boiled fiction, but people looking to connect with classic American crime fiction will like this one as well.
June 2, 2016
A definite improvement over The Moving Target, this second Lew Archer outing has all the hallmarks of a quality PI mystery: blackmail, a dysfunctional family with money and a lifetime of grudges against one another, murder, gangsters, a femme fatale, corporate greed, a dubious doctor, dirty cops, bludgeonings and druggings, and a daisy-chain of hidden motives, buried secrets and tragic misunderstandings leading to an inevitable outcome where no one is innocent and the guilty are only all too human. Lew Archer shucks off some of his obvious Phillip Marlowe veneer and reveals himself as a more sensative private eye than Chandler's misanthropic hero. A really engrossing, downbeat mystery for those who enjoy the rich tradition of PI noir.
August 25, 2024
3 1/2 stars rounded up.
I thought the storyline was a bit confusing, perhaps because it was an audiobook and sometimes hard to remember who was who. Interesting read, mostly because of the dialog. Did people really talk like that back then?
I thought the storyline was a bit confusing, perhaps because it was an audiobook and sometimes hard to remember who was who. Interesting read, mostly because of the dialog. Did people really talk like that back then?
![Profile Image for Ed [Redacted].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1429513592i%2F3968676.jpg&w=128&q=75)
June 5, 2012
Another good, very good in fact, novel from Macdonald. About equal in quality with The Moving Target. The plotting is adequate, the story moves along nicely. Good dialog, etc. etc. The best thing about the first two novels is the character of Lew Archer. Archer is the epitome of the hard boiled, tough talking, wise cracking private detective. For an example, I will turn to a page randomly for a wisecrack*.
Archer, upon confronting someone he had shot in one arm earlier in the book, "I swung the door wide open and waved my gun. His fingers were twisting on the leather button that held the flap over the pocket. 'get in' I said. 'you don't want it to happen to the other arm, I have a passion for symmetry".
I am happy to read that the Archer books don't peak until about Book 11 or so (The Zebra-Striped Hearse) and the quality stays high throughout. I look forward to continuing this fine series.
* Some wisecracks may not be random, your results may vary, see entry form for details
Archer, upon confronting someone he had shot in one arm earlier in the book, "I swung the door wide open and waved my gun. His fingers were twisting on the leather button that held the flap over the pocket. 'get in' I said. 'you don't want it to happen to the other arm, I have a passion for symmetry".
I am happy to read that the Archer books don't peak until about Book 11 or so (The Zebra-Striped Hearse) and the quality stays high throughout. I look forward to continuing this fine series.
* Some wisecracks may not be random, your results may vary, see entry form for details
November 27, 2021
This second Lew Archer mystery finds one of L.A.'s most classic P.I.'s looking for a blackmailer which soon turns into chasing down a murderer. That's pretty much all you need to know of the plot.
The Drowning Pool has some wonderful sentences and Macdonald's settings and characters create a cool, dark atmosphere. The narrative is a little muddled and I forgot who some folks were, but that's not what's important with this book. It's all about the experience: solving a mystery with a weird twist and resolution...what's not to like?
The Drowning Pool has some wonderful sentences and Macdonald's settings and characters create a cool, dark atmosphere. The narrative is a little muddled and I forgot who some folks were, but that's not what's important with this book. It's all about the experience: solving a mystery with a weird twist and resolution...what's not to like?
May 28, 2022
One of my Goodreads friends is a fan of the early detective novels and since he thoroughly enjoyed this one I thought I would give it a try. Plot line is a bit clunky but I enjoyed the descriptions of California in the 50's and the things we used to take for granted - everyone smokes, only pay phones available, etc. So a bit of a fun time capsule, interesting that upon checking on my kindle dictionary for some of the words the definition pops up marked "archaic". How soon we forget!
January 15, 2022
The second of Ross Macdonald's full-length novels about the adventures of private eye Lew Archer - think a more introverted version of Philip Marlowe and you're not far off - sees him journeying to a Southern Californian resort town going through an urban renewal financed by a local oil baron. The story's main conflict revolves around a series of blackmail letters and mysterious deaths afflicting a dispossessed upper-class family that happens to oppose said renewal as a consequence of old money looking down at the nouveau riche. Few authors do the entire "festering moral decay underneath a shiny idyllic surface" theme better than him... who once again also displays an excellent sense of capturing the cultural zeitgeist of the United States during their post-WW2 economic boom.
The intricate descriptions of the architecture, cars, fashion and interior design actually make me nostalgic for that era because I like the aesthetic so much... even though the story also makes clear how much of a dark underside there was to it all! Same effect as the TV series "Mad Men" has on a lot of people, or for that matter several of David Lynch's films though they comment more on the nostalgia for the 1950's that American culture in the 1980's flirted with - in similar ways that pop culture right now flirts with 1980's nostalgia, I might add. Come to think of it, I get kind of that vibe from James Ellroy's use of the post-WW2 US setting in the novels he wrote at the same time Lynch made "Blue Velvet", which again are much more obviously a continuation of the same tradition that Ross Macdonald belonged to. The reason I dwell on this so much in my reviews of Ross Macdonald's books is that it results in them having a very different feel than Hammett's or most of Chandler's novels, where the characters usually know their world's a mess as a result of being in the middle of either the Great Depression or World War Two.
On a thematic level there's also an interesting Great Gatsby-style commentary on the class conflict between the established upper class and the upper-middle class nouveau riche displacing it. Likewise when Lew Archer goes to investigate things in the blue-collar neighbourhoods, where the city's working class faces the worst consequences of the rivalry between the elites, the tone flips from a pulp F. Scott Fitzgerald to something almost like a more "safe-for-work" Charles Bukowski - a shift between two different atmospheres Macdonald pulls with great effect.
My favourite thing about "The Drowning Pool", though, has to be a scene near the end which functions as a microcosmos of the author's attention to the most important small details in the central structure of the story's underlying conflict: The climax features a well thought out twist on the "villainous mastermind captures protagonist and explains entire scheme to him" cliché where the main antagonist of the story does that because he genuinely thinks he can buy off Lew Archer into working for him, and doesn't even attempt to kill him until later when Archer attempts to escape. There's a real sense of mutual admiration between two characters regarding each other as worthy opponents, that Macdonald communicates perfectly in just a single very short chapter, rather than the bad guy coming across as a narcissist seeking confirmation of genius from his enemies.
That represents a very different approach to how say Raymond Chandler or Ian Fleming handled similar scenes, in the process demonstrating the kind of sharp psychological insights behind character motivations that Macdonald's stories are full of.
The intricate descriptions of the architecture, cars, fashion and interior design actually make me nostalgic for that era because I like the aesthetic so much... even though the story also makes clear how much of a dark underside there was to it all! Same effect as the TV series "Mad Men" has on a lot of people, or for that matter several of David Lynch's films though they comment more on the nostalgia for the 1950's that American culture in the 1980's flirted with - in similar ways that pop culture right now flirts with 1980's nostalgia, I might add. Come to think of it, I get kind of that vibe from James Ellroy's use of the post-WW2 US setting in the novels he wrote at the same time Lynch made "Blue Velvet", which again are much more obviously a continuation of the same tradition that Ross Macdonald belonged to. The reason I dwell on this so much in my reviews of Ross Macdonald's books is that it results in them having a very different feel than Hammett's or most of Chandler's novels, where the characters usually know their world's a mess as a result of being in the middle of either the Great Depression or World War Two.
On a thematic level there's also an interesting Great Gatsby-style commentary on the class conflict between the established upper class and the upper-middle class nouveau riche displacing it. Likewise when Lew Archer goes to investigate things in the blue-collar neighbourhoods, where the city's working class faces the worst consequences of the rivalry between the elites, the tone flips from a pulp F. Scott Fitzgerald to something almost like a more "safe-for-work" Charles Bukowski - a shift between two different atmospheres Macdonald pulls with great effect.
My favourite thing about "The Drowning Pool", though, has to be a scene near the end which functions as a microcosmos of the author's attention to the most important small details in the central structure of the story's underlying conflict: The climax features a well thought out twist on the "villainous mastermind captures protagonist and explains entire scheme to him" cliché where the main antagonist of the story does that because he genuinely thinks he can buy off Lew Archer into working for him, and doesn't even attempt to kill him until later when Archer attempts to escape. There's a real sense of mutual admiration between two characters regarding each other as worthy opponents, that Macdonald communicates perfectly in just a single very short chapter, rather than the bad guy coming across as a narcissist seeking confirmation of genius from his enemies.
That represents a very different approach to how say Raymond Chandler or Ian Fleming handled similar scenes, in the process demonstrating the kind of sharp psychological insights behind character motivations that Macdonald's stories are full of.
June 25, 2021
I think I’m beginning to get the sense of how to read a Lew Archer novel. Above all, the trick seems to be to look sideways at the whole business.
On the one hand, we don’t seem as if we’re supposed to care all that much about Archer himself. He’s competent, of course, and he has the occasional existential insight worth savoring, but his life seems largely irrelevant. We meet him when his clients arrive, and we leave him when the case is settled. There’s none of the larger private life that seems to define more recent series protagonists (like in Walter Mosley or Lawrence Block, to name a couple favorites – though I plan to revisit Block soon). There’s also little of the pure strangeness of Hammett or Chandler. We don’t get the foregrounded sense of a man-of-a-code quality.
On the other hand, the mysteries themselves seem incidental. They’re hardly whodunits since our original clients seems to fade and even die. Things go for a while and then, suddenly, someone new gets killed and the story jumps forward. Outside of some procedural insight, Archer doesn’t seem a great solver of mysteries. He gets by more on shoe leather than insight.
That doesn’t make these less impressive, though. There’s a world-weariness here that I find appealing. He seems to want a better world, but he doesn’t know how to find it. And, as someone who does divorce work for most of his living, he’s not about to find it. He’s like a sanitation worker who’d like to stay clean himself. Even if he succeeds, he can’t help see (and smell) all the garbage around him. And, can he really expect to stay clean?
In this one, we get a wealthy woman who hires Archer to look into a potential blackmail letter that someone has sent her. That plot point peters out quickly, though, as her wealthy mother-in-law winds up drowned in their pool. We see all sorts of suspects, and everyone’s motives seem colored by greed and despair. I confess that the individuals blur together for me, but that’s OK too. The overall effect is interesting; I can begin to see some of what so many admire in the series.
The end [SPOILER:] makes things all the more depressing when we find that it’s a quietly pathological daughter/granddaughter who has killed her grandmother and driven her mother to suicide, all in part because she has an Electra complex for her stepfather who is himself gay. Archer has effectively failed to protect anyone who came within his scope. He’s not even Philip Marlowe, who seems able to preserve a small square of traditional decency in the corrupt Modern world he encounters. For Archer, it’s just a matter of glimpsing what might have been better.
I want to like these more than I do, and I plan to keep pushing though them for a while. In these early ones (I understand that something changes about a third of the way through) there are still too many coincidences, too many casual murders for me to feel I’m reading something masterful.
I think I’m in good hands, and I find a congenial mind at work.
On the one hand, we don’t seem as if we’re supposed to care all that much about Archer himself. He’s competent, of course, and he has the occasional existential insight worth savoring, but his life seems largely irrelevant. We meet him when his clients arrive, and we leave him when the case is settled. There’s none of the larger private life that seems to define more recent series protagonists (like in Walter Mosley or Lawrence Block, to name a couple favorites – though I plan to revisit Block soon). There’s also little of the pure strangeness of Hammett or Chandler. We don’t get the foregrounded sense of a man-of-a-code quality.
On the other hand, the mysteries themselves seem incidental. They’re hardly whodunits since our original clients seems to fade and even die. Things go for a while and then, suddenly, someone new gets killed and the story jumps forward. Outside of some procedural insight, Archer doesn’t seem a great solver of mysteries. He gets by more on shoe leather than insight.
That doesn’t make these less impressive, though. There’s a world-weariness here that I find appealing. He seems to want a better world, but he doesn’t know how to find it. And, as someone who does divorce work for most of his living, he’s not about to find it. He’s like a sanitation worker who’d like to stay clean himself. Even if he succeeds, he can’t help see (and smell) all the garbage around him. And, can he really expect to stay clean?
In this one, we get a wealthy woman who hires Archer to look into a potential blackmail letter that someone has sent her. That plot point peters out quickly, though, as her wealthy mother-in-law winds up drowned in their pool. We see all sorts of suspects, and everyone’s motives seem colored by greed and despair. I confess that the individuals blur together for me, but that’s OK too. The overall effect is interesting; I can begin to see some of what so many admire in the series.
The end [SPOILER:] makes things all the more depressing when we find that it’s a quietly pathological daughter/granddaughter who has killed her grandmother and driven her mother to suicide, all in part because she has an Electra complex for her stepfather who is himself gay. Archer has effectively failed to protect anyone who came within his scope. He’s not even Philip Marlowe, who seems able to preserve a small square of traditional decency in the corrupt Modern world he encounters. For Archer, it’s just a matter of glimpsing what might have been better.
I want to like these more than I do, and I plan to keep pushing though them for a while. In these early ones (I understand that something changes about a third of the way through) there are still too many coincidences, too many casual murders for me to feel I’m reading something masterful.
I think I’m in good hands, and I find a congenial mind at work.
May 13, 2018
I really enjoyed Lew Archer. He reminded me somewhat of Philip Marlow in voice and character. Though much kinder and more altruistic.
There are some incredibly rich scenes in this novel, that I enjoyed. Particularly those when Archer battles with his nature and his morals. The temptation of Acapulco and Mavis, and the touching gift to Gretchen were stand out moments of writing to me. I enjoyed Ross' writing, in fairness it is not as metaphor rich as Chandler's first, but is still first class. Chandler is, I've discovered, in a class of his own!
The plot was ok-ish, some moments of brilliance but on the whole quite pedestrian. Friends have told me the plots get better in later books so I'm looking forward to coming back for more!
There are some incredibly rich scenes in this novel, that I enjoyed. Particularly those when Archer battles with his nature and his morals. The temptation of Acapulco and Mavis, and the touching gift to Gretchen were stand out moments of writing to me. I enjoyed Ross' writing, in fairness it is not as metaphor rich as Chandler's first, but is still first class. Chandler is, I've discovered, in a class of his own!
The plot was ok-ish, some moments of brilliance but on the whole quite pedestrian. Friends have told me the plots get better in later books so I'm looking forward to coming back for more!
March 23, 2016
I’m still fairly new to the world of Ross Macdonald and Lew Archer, but I’ve greatly enjoyed what I’ve read so far. This one starts with poison-pen letters and speeds quickly to dead bodies, femme fatales and gangsters. Of course, this being Macdonald, there’s a lot more psychological insight than one would normally find in this type of thriller. Pacy, well plotted with great descriptions and synonyms, this book is up there with Chandler – and, in my world, there’s no higher praise than that.
September 17, 2011
More Ross Macdonald. More Lew Archer. More great American crime/detective writing.
I've read three novels and a collection of short fiction my Mr. Macdonald (nee' Kenneth Millar) now and I remain impressed. I'm still shocked that I had been unaware of this author (except for one excellent short story) for so long - thank you Goodreads! Whether he is writing in s style that reminds one of Dashiell Hammet (some of the early short fiction) or in his fully-developed style of later years, he is an exceptional storyteller.
Although I won't be quoting from it (as I did in a previous review), you can be assured that there is stunningly descriptive prose here as well. I found this book to have a little less use of psychology than in comparison to "The Wycherly Woman" or "The Galton Case". Archer is still the insightful man, but here action and pacing seem to dominate the writing more. Perhaps he was trying to mix things up a bit and keep his character and readers fresh. In any event, it is a great novel one that should appeal to readers of all kinds, not just mystery buffs.
Like all of the long form fiction of his that I have read, this book is full of characters and sub-plots. Archer steps his way through the minefield with his own sense of justice; making friends and enemies despite numerous opportunities to "take the easy way". Like the best of the noir protagonists his inner drive to do what is right forces him to push through to the end no matter how much he loses or gives up to get there.
In this book, Macdonald writes about the development of southern California. And instead of praising the suburbanization of the countryside he describes its negative aspects. While today or even a couple of decades ago this would not be unusual, it is remarkable in a book written in 1950. It's the first wave of post-WWII prosperity and baby boomers, when Ready Watt and nuclear power were the future, but here is a man using his excellent writing talents to showcase how his protagonist and other key characters see development as a thing to be avoided or abhorred. And it is made into a significant part of the novel; one which offers motivation for a number of the major players. And it is not forced: the writing and attitudes flow as naturally and as smoothly as any story you might like. That is skill and Mr. Macdonald had it in buckets.
I don't ever recall seeing the movie made from this novel, so I can't say if it is a decent translation of the book. I do know that the location was shifted from SoCal to New Orleans. I wonder about that as all of the Lew Archer stories that I have read are bound up in the geography and people of California and Nevada.
In danger of repeating myself, I think everyone should pickup this or any Ross Macdonald "Lew Archer" story and treat themselves to a superior story and characters. Enjoy!
I've read three novels and a collection of short fiction my Mr. Macdonald (nee' Kenneth Millar) now and I remain impressed. I'm still shocked that I had been unaware of this author (except for one excellent short story) for so long - thank you Goodreads! Whether he is writing in s style that reminds one of Dashiell Hammet (some of the early short fiction) or in his fully-developed style of later years, he is an exceptional storyteller.
Although I won't be quoting from it (as I did in a previous review), you can be assured that there is stunningly descriptive prose here as well. I found this book to have a little less use of psychology than in comparison to "The Wycherly Woman" or "The Galton Case". Archer is still the insightful man, but here action and pacing seem to dominate the writing more. Perhaps he was trying to mix things up a bit and keep his character and readers fresh. In any event, it is a great novel one that should appeal to readers of all kinds, not just mystery buffs.
Like all of the long form fiction of his that I have read, this book is full of characters and sub-plots. Archer steps his way through the minefield with his own sense of justice; making friends and enemies despite numerous opportunities to "take the easy way". Like the best of the noir protagonists his inner drive to do what is right forces him to push through to the end no matter how much he loses or gives up to get there.
In this book, Macdonald writes about the development of southern California. And instead of praising the suburbanization of the countryside he describes its negative aspects. While today or even a couple of decades ago this would not be unusual, it is remarkable in a book written in 1950. It's the first wave of post-WWII prosperity and baby boomers, when Ready Watt and nuclear power were the future, but here is a man using his excellent writing talents to showcase how his protagonist and other key characters see development as a thing to be avoided or abhorred. And it is made into a significant part of the novel; one which offers motivation for a number of the major players. And it is not forced: the writing and attitudes flow as naturally and as smoothly as any story you might like. That is skill and Mr. Macdonald had it in buckets.
I don't ever recall seeing the movie made from this novel, so I can't say if it is a decent translation of the book. I do know that the location was shifted from SoCal to New Orleans. I wonder about that as all of the Lew Archer stories that I have read are bound up in the geography and people of California and Nevada.
In danger of repeating myself, I think everyone should pickup this or any Ross Macdonald "Lew Archer" story and treat themselves to a superior story and characters. Enjoy!
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