review of
Ross MacDonald's The Name is Archer
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 8-10, 2021

I've probably given roughly the same intro to every bk of short stories that I've reviewed: viz that I don't like short stories nearly as much as novels & generally avoid them. That sd, I might as well follow that w/ a similarly predictable statement: one standard that the quality of a short story is judged by is how much can be made to happen in a brief space. MacDonald's 7 stories in this collection are point-blank amazing in that respect. Every one of them is an absolutely engrossing labyrinth of the twists & turns that one usually hopes for in a mystery. In fact, these are novels in & of themselves. Each one cd easily be turned into a feature-length movie. Simply as a writer I find it close to impossible to find fault w/ MacDonald. Take this description in the 1st story, "Find the Woman":

"Mrs. Dreen was over forty and looked it, but there was electricity in her, plugging into a secret source that time could never wear out. Look how high and tight I carry my body, her movements said. My hair is hennaed but comely, said her coiffure, inviting not to conviction but to suspension of disbelief. Her eyes were green and inconstant like the sea. They said what the hell." - p 1

His presentation of his characters is almost always full, he seems to be a good observer of human nature & to use this skill in making his characters complicated by a depth of qualities & emotions & psychological nuance that makes the author a great novelist regardless of the additional crime fiction elements.

This 1st story seems to be from 1946. As w/ the earliest novel of his that I've read, this means that WWII is still fresh in the memory.

""Frankly, I don't know about the police. I do know about you, Mr. Archer. You just got out of the army, didn't you?"

""Last week." I failed to add that she was my first post-war client." - p 2

Archer's been hired to find Mrs. Dreen's missing daughter. The story foreshadows quickly.

"And I wondered if her daughter Una was like her.

"When I did get to see Una, the current had been cut off; I learned about it only by the marks it left. It left marks." - p 4

MacDonald's forays into 'poetic' descriptiveness always interest me. He often uses it as a transitional device.

"I went down the road to the beach house like a bat into hell. The sun, huge and angry red, was horizontal now, half-eclipsed by the sea and almost perceptibly sinking. It spread a red glow over the shore like a soft and creeping fire. After a long time, I thought, the cliffs would crumble, the sea would dry up, the whole earth would burn out. There'd be nothing left but bone-white cratered ashes like the moon." - p 13

Notice that it's NOT 'like a bat outta hell'.

The diabolical selfishness of the solution to "Find the Woman"'s mystery is of such a nature that whether Archer will report it to the police as a crime is left ambiguous.

""I hope for your sake he doesn't figure out for himself what I've just figured out."

""Do you think he will?" Sudden terror had jerked her face apart.

"I didn't answer her." - p 26

MacDonald's stories have psychological depth & Archer usually has sympathy for the miseries of the people he encounters in his unravelings.. but not always..

"I pushed past him, through a kitchenette that was indescribably filthy, littered with the remnants of old meals, and gaseous with their odors. He followed me silently on bare soles into a larger room whose sprung floorboards undulated under my feet. The picture window had been broken and patched with cardboard. The stone fireplace was choked with garbage. The only furniture was an army cot in one corner where Donny apparently slept.

""Nice homey place you have here. It has that lived-in quality."

"He seemed to take it as a compliment, and I wondered if I was dealing with a moron." - "Gone Girl", p 38

It's hard for me to say whether MacDonald's characterizations are realistic or the literary facsimile of realism. That might seem like a strange distinction but what I mean is that in the interest of making characters distinct he gives them characteristics that aren't impossible but unlikely to encounter.

""Fifty-second Street?"

""It's the street with the beat and I'm not effete." His left hand struck the same chord three times and dropped away from the keys. "Looking for somebody, friend?"

""Fern Dee. She asked me to drop by sometimes."

""Too bad. Another wasted trip. She left here end of last year, the dear. She wasn't a bad little nightingale but she was no pro, Joe, you know? She had it but she couldn't project it. When she warbled the evening died, no matter how hard she tried, I don't wanna be snide."" - p 44

& then there's the description again.

"He smiled at me, with a tolerance more terrible than anger. His eyes were like thin stab-wounds filled with watery blood." - p 50

One thing that seems to recur w/ MacDonald is Archer's contempt for artistic & musical types (even tho the author, himself, is very literate).

"He led me through a storeroom stacked with old gilt-framed pictures whose painters deserved to be hung. If the pictures didn't." - p 74

It seems to me that MacDonald has commented on the following more than once:

"The rest of the walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling—the kind of books that are bought by the set and never read." - p 108

As a former book seller I can attest that some people do buy bks just to use a props for presenting a certain appearance. What I wonder is: Is that obsolete now as something meant to impress? It seems to me that we've entered a new era where so few people care about bks that such pretense wdn't even work anymore. Maybe a plentitude of easily demonstrated apps on one's phone is the new wall-of-(unread)-bks. At least people use the apps. I'd rather have them read the bks - but then I'm an outsider.

"The dead man's record also helped. He had been widely suspected of shooting Bugsy Siegel, and had fallen heir to some of Seigel's holdings. His name was Jack Fidelis. R.I.P." - p 156

An actual specific reference to a 'real-life gangster' seemed so uncharacteristic of MacDonald that I just had to look up Fidelis. I didn't find Fidelis so that makes me wonder what MacDonald knew that later writers didn't know:

"According to New York journalist and author Larry McShane, even former Philadelphia Mafia boss Ralph Natale, later a Mob turncoat, believes the Siegel hit was carried out by Carbo and was set up by Lansky, Siegel’s childhood friend.

"West Coast hit man Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno, who temporarily served as head of the Los Angeles crime family before becoming a government witness, supported the Carbo theory. Fratianno’s telling of it is laid out in a 1980 book about his criminal life, The Last Mafioso, by Ovid Demaris, one of the authors of The Green Felt Jungle.
In the book, Fratianno claims that L.A. Mafia boss Jack Dragna told him Carbo did the killing on Lansky’s orders.

"The motive: Siegel was a dreamer who had been dreaming with “important” people’s money in constructing the Flamingo. Messing with someone else’s money is the “fastest way to get clipped,” Dragna told Fratianno, according to the book.

"One who disagrees with the Mob hit theory is Bernie Sindler, an emissary of Lansky’s in Las Vegas during that era.

"In a 2017 interview at The Mob Museum with author Geoff Schumacher, the museum’s senior director of content, Sindler, now in his 90s, said killing Siegel would have required permission from Charles “Lucky” Luciano, “who was the head of everything.” Luciano would not have given permission because Lansky, who was close to Luciano, would not have allowed the killing to happen, Sindler said in the interview.
According to Sindler, that made Siegel “untouchable.”"

[..]

"Moreover, the method used to kill Siegel was out of sync with the Mob way of doing things. Firing a weapon from outside a house increases the risk of missing, Sindler said. That is not how Mob hit men carried out their deadly assignments. The preferred method was a shot to the back of the head by a killer seated behind the victim in a car. That sort of killing reduces the risk of missing.

"The shooter, Sindler contended, was one of Virginia Hill’s brothers, a U.S. Marine named either Bob or Bill — he couldn’t remember which. The Marine brother was stationed at Camp Pendleton near Oceanside, California."

- https://themobmuseum.org/blog/killed-benjamin-bugsy-siegel/

I wonder when bullet-proofing was invented?

"Harry Nemo took me outside to his car. It was a new seven-passenger custom job, as long and black as death. The windshield and side-windows were very thick, and they had the yellowish tinge of bullet-proof glass.

""Are you expecting to be shot at?"

""Not me." His smile was dismal. "This is Nick's car."" - "Guilt-Edged Blonde", p 163

"History: According to Inkasarmored.com, the concept of bullet-resistant glass was stumbled upon quite by accident in the 17th century, but it wasn’t until 1903 that the quest of researching and developing “bulletproof” glass began. Modern “bulletproof” glass was first patented by French chemist, Édouard Bénédictus in 1909." - https://glassdoctor.com/blog/how-is-bulletproof-glass-made

Have any hard-boiled detective fiction writers ever had their protagonists be w/o a sarcastic sense of humor?

""Might you be Archer?"

""It's a reasonable conclusion. Name's on the door."

""I can read, thank you."

""Congratulations, but this is no talent agency."

"He stiffened, clutching his blue chin with a seal-ringed hand, and gave me a long, sad, hostile stare. Then he shrugged awkwardly, as though there was no help for it.

""Come on in if you like," I said. "Close it behind you. Don't mind me, I get snappy in the heat."" - "The Sinister Habit", p 179

Does that make him a snappy addresser?!

["]He's a brilliant creative artist in the theatre."

""Have you ever heard of him, Archer?"

""No."

""Leonard Lister?" the old woman said. "Surely you know his name, if you live in Los Angeles. He's a well-known director of the experimental theatre. He's even taught at the University. Leonard has wonderful plans for making poetic film, like Cocteau's in France."" - p 187

You mean Archer doesn't follow experimental theater? & why do they use the British spelling? B/c it's easier to turn into "theatrical"?

MacDonald's formal device of using description for section beginnings & endings & for segues is apparent here:

"The plane turned in towards the shoreline and began to lose altitude. Mountains detached themselves from the blue distance. Then there was a city between the sea and the mountains, a little city made of sugar cubes. The cubes increased in size. Cars crawled like colored beetles between the buildings, and matchstick figures hustled jerkily along the white morning pavements. A few minutes later I was one of them." - "Wild Goose Chase", p 221

If the plane had crashed, it wd've been a result of its bad altitude. ( )

If you didn't know it, you'd think it was Chandler. This collection is a good introduction to this fine noirish author. ( )

Short stories featuring Lew Archer. I think the novels are better, but there's some good reading here. ( )