I always forget how much I enjoy the Lew Archer books, until I pick one up. Highly recommend for any fan of private eyes, crime fiction, or just plain good writing. ( )

I'd forgotten how much I enjoy his writing. ( )

review of
Ross MacDonald's The Zebra-Striped Hearse
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 15-16, 2021

How many novels quote Dante? Quite a few, I reckon. Someday, when everything's digitized, including my fingers (wait! aren't they already digitized?) someone like me (meybe even ME) will be able to run a Dante search sub-criteria: mentions in novels & make a new novel out of the accumulated material. Unfortunately, this new novel will be encyclopedia length & no-one will read it so this person like me will kill themselves. So, you see?, this new tech has a down side. Bummer, man.

"There was a touch of sadness on her mouth. It was a face that had known suffering, and seemed to be renewing the acquaintance.

"I said in an exploratory way: " 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here.' "

"She colored slightly. "You're quick at catching moods. Or is that a stock line?"

""I've used it before."

""So has Dante."" - p 1

I don't know Dante that well but I think 'Abandon hope..' is what was written over the entrance to the Searching for Human Intelligence dept. Or did I dream that?

"I had a dream which I'd been dreaming in various forms for as long as I could remember. I was back in high school, in my senior year. The girl at the next desk smiled at me snootily.

""Poor Lew. You'll fail the exams."

"I had to admit to myself that this was likely. The finals loomed up ahead like the impossible slopes of purgatory, guarded by men with books I hadn't read.

"I'm going to college," she said. "What are you going to do?"

"I had no idea. I knew with a part of my dreaming mind that I was a grown man in my forties. There wasn't anything more that high school could do to me. Yet here I was, back in Mr. Merritt's classroom, dreading the finals and wondering what I would do when I had failed them.

""You'll have to learn a trade," the snooty one said.

"So far it was more or less the dream I always had. Then something different happened. I said to the girl, rather snootily: "I have a trade, kiddo. I'm a detective. You'll be reading about me in the papers."" - p 47

I found it interesting that MacDonald includes a dream in this novel. I don't recall his doing that in any other (I may be forgetting). What's, perhaps, a little strange to me about it is that there's dialog in it. I don't think my dreams have talking. I contribute, quite rarely, to the Annandale Dream Gazette ( https://annandaledreamgazetteonline.blogspot.com/search/label/tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE ). I have 7 dream descriptions there. In one of them there's this passage:

"People were behind me talking about this car & discussing the difficulty of selling it for the asking price of $500,000. Sometime around this time, a woman in her 50s or 60s w/ whitish hair saw me asked me I'd like the job of coming & sitting w/ the car from time-to-time - sortof like the way people house-sit in Switzerland to make houses seem occupied while the people who live there are away to prevent squatting (this comparison being a waking one & NOT one made in the dream). I explained that I don't really like cars & that I wdn't really be an appropriate person to do this. In the meantime, the car had probably grown - perhaps no longer exactly a car anymore. The woman explained that all I had to do was hang out at the object (perhaps no longer a car at this point) & that I cd watch outdoor movies from the hill (or some-such). This started to seem like it might be fun so I sortof agreed to do it. By now I may've been standing on the deck of this object - wch was now a boat. The woman was off the boat, near its back, & she realized that she wanted me to sign some paperwork."

I don't present dialog in quotes, I describe it instead. Does that qualify?

In today's world (2021EV) the pressure is on BIGTIME for people to be vaccinated. I haven't been vaccinated since I was 14 (around 1968) & I've been fine, I prefer to go w/ what's worked for me, I don't trust an artificial introduction of illness into my body. It's funny to read about Archer going to Mexico & being suddenly confronted w/ a required vaccination.

"The line of passengers moved forward slowly in steamy heat. I got my turn at the battered rostrumlike desk where a man in an open-necked white shirt presided. He had pock-marks on his face, and they gave special emphasis to his question: "Certificado de vacunacion, señor?"

"I had none. No one had told me. That was a silly thing to say, but I said it. He leaned toward me not so much in anger as in sorrow.

""You must have the vacunacion. I cannot permit you to enter—"

""How do I get one?"

""They will vacunate you ahora, now, here."" - p 52

Do you think they'd accept a vacuuming instead? I mean, just imagine it: a vacuum hose stuck in yr arm or up yr ass w/ special filters designed to just get the bad stuff out. It's perfect! Weight loss in minutes - even better than pills - & the really bad people, like myself, wd have our brains suctioned out - we'd get what we deserve, debraining n'at.

But I digress. Archer has a conversation w/ his Mexican taxi driver.

""I was a wetback," he said with some pride. "Three times I walked across the border. Two times they picked me up on the other side and hauled me back on the bus. The third time, I made it, all the way to Merced. I worked around Merced for four years, in the fields. You know Merced?"

""I know it. How were working coniditions?"

""Not so good. But the pay, it was very good. I made enough to come back home and go into business." He slapped the wheel of his Simca." - pp 54-55

Now, I've been saying for a long time that if California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Kansas, & Oklahoma were given back to Mexico, y'know?, the country that the US stole them from back in the 19th century?, that, well, there might not be this 'wetback problem', eh? ( https://hiplatina.com/10-states-in-the-u-s-that-were-once-a-part-of-mexico/ ) But then the Spanish-descended overlords might take the rest of North America & I might have to speak bad Spanish to get by & I wdn't like that.

Eventually, a painter is a suspect. In my 2 most recent MacDonald reviews before this one I commented that the author seems to have Archer be someone who has difficulty appreciating art. ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3937560785, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3945259967 ) Judging by this next bit he probably wdn't've even liked Caravaggio.

""On the contrary, the trail is cold."

""I'm glad. Campion is a good painter."

""How good?"

""So good that I don't greatly care what he did to his wife," she said softly. "You live in a world of stark whites and blacks. My world is one of shadings, and the mechanism of punishment is anathema to me. 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' is the law of the primitive tribe. If we practiced it to the letter we would all be eyeless and toothless. I hope he eludes you, and goes on painting."" - p 89

But what about the police? Wd they've liked Caravaggio?

"Royal was unimpressed by" ["Judith Beheading Holofernes"]. ""He's trying to fake an alibi for his wife's murder."

""Or establish one. I think you should talk to the key boy Nelson Karp, and see if that registration card is genuine. It's in the hands of the Saline City police."

"Royal said without much interest: "Alibis like that one come a dime a dozen and you know it. He could have checked in at this motel and even spent part of the night, then driven back to Luna Bay and done her in. It's only about thirty miles between the two places."

""Which makes it all the easier to check."

""Look," he said. "I've got other things on my mind. Take it up with Deputy Mungan if you like. He's in charge of the substation at Luna Bay, and he's been handling the evidential details."" - p 126

Even when the cop catches up w/ the painter he has the gall to insult Van Gogh ( https://archive.org/details/agoghgogh ). It's no wonder that someone named after a typewriter wd think mechanistically.

""I'm not too ignorant to know a psycho when I see one, fooling around with paintboxes and living on women. Why don't you do a man's work?"

""Like vagging prostitutes and shaking them down?"

""Don't talk to me about prostitutes. I read a book about that whoring psycho French painter—the one that cut off his ear and committed suicide. How psycho can you get?"

"Campion sat up in bed. "If you weren't so ignorant you'd speak of Van Gogh with respect. Incidentally, he wasn't a Frenchman. He was a Dutchman, and a great religious genius."" - pp 127-128

Besides, Royal was probably confusing him w/ Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Or Ariel Olivetti. You know how these cops are about rival typewriters.

But is it true, as at least one Goodreads reviewer of my acquaintance claims, that MacDonald "loves to compare women to birds of prey" ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1175785602?book_show_action=false&from... ). Well, if so, I haven't noticed it.

"Like other women I had known, she had the strength to accept the worst that could happen and go on from there." - p 142

In fact, it's a woman who has the smarts to figure out the following:

""I saw you there the other day," I said. "Now let's see if we can pin down the date you found the coat."

""I don't see how. That was a long time ago, a couple months."

"The girl rose and touched his arm. "What about the tide tables, Raybuzz?"

""What about them?"

""We had a six-point-five tide that day. We haven't had many this year. You've got the tide tables in the car, haven't you?"" - p 159

So you see? Take 2 women a day & if your headache doesn't go away don't call me b/c I obviously don't know what I'm doing. ( )

Like his other novels it's got all the elements: rich and poor, middle-aged and teens, many locations (mostly in California) and many intriguing clues that lead in various directions. Zebra-Striped Hearse is easily among his best and it somehow works on my like a feel-good novel. Not that I have any attraction for murder stories, but the Lew Archer stories always leave me feeling better about myself. ( )

One of the women narrating needs to brush up on her pronunciation - camino real is not KAMino reel. Silly. Otherwise it's great so far, Asner delivers Lew's 1st person narration as well as his dialog, and everyone else does other parts. Good music and sound effects. I kind of wish all the Archer books were done this way. ( )