Black Money

Lew Archer’s latest case seems to be fairly straightforward. His client, Peter Jamieson, was engaged to Virginia Fablon until she ended the relationship and left him for a French political refugee, Francis Martel. Jamieson isn’t convinced that Martel is who he says he is; Archer’s job is to look into Martel’s background and perhaps prevent Virginia from having her heart broken. But as Archer investigates the case, many hearts are about to be broken — and lives ended.

It’s always a treat to come back to a Lew Archer novel. Macdonald’s writing is elegant and understated, and Archer as a character is a relatively moderate example of a private investigator. It may help that he’s 50 years old, not about to run around on an show more impulse. He takes his time and weighs his options before taking action.

This story kept me guessing, even as I thought I’d called parts of it. It’s also a story that I’m not sure would be as successful if the characters lived in the present day—they’d have additional challenges posed by 21st-century technology and the internet. But as an example of 1960s noir, it’s a very good one. show less

Many critics consider this to be Ross Macdonald's finest book, and Macdonald himself professed to agree...perhaps because of the general consensus among critics. I love his work, and this is a good book, but it's not in my top three (The Wycherly Woman, The Chill and The Underground Man, in that order). The fact is that critics are partial to Black Money because it nods self-consciously to Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and such allusions are considered the height of sophistication in the literary world. In a very real sense, Macdonald wrote this novel for the critics after a couple of them had disparaged certain elements of The Chill. Artists are sensitive, and I guess it's not surprising that Macdonald responded to criticism by trying show more to prove that he could produce a "serious" book, but he needn't have bothered. He was already a first-class writer, and didn't have to demonstrate that to a bunch of stuffy literary people whose readership was a tiny fraction of his own. Like I said, Black Money is good, but I think Macdonald may have overvalued it a little falsely. (Even as he proclaimed this his best novel, however, he had to concede that The Chill contained his finest plotting.) Also, there are a few instances of editorial sloppiness--a rare phenomenon in Macdonald's oeuvre--which deny this book a place among the top tier of his work, in my opinion.

The back cover synopsis for Bantam's 1973 paperback edition tries hard to convey the impression that Macdonald had suddenly turned into Mickey Spillane, and it's downright hilarious: "Lew Archer made a deal with fat little Rich Boy at the posh Montevista Tennis Club. Seems Rich Boy had lost his beautiful fiancée to a stranger with a suspiciously phony French accent. So Rich Boy hired Archer to retrieve the runaway fiancée. Sounded like a fast, clean bundle for old, broke Archer..." You have to wonder who wrote that. (It certainly wasn't Macdonald.) Maybe the publisher was apprehensive about the book's literary pretensions and felt the need to compensate with an overtly hard-boiled teaser?

Black Money is a standard Archer novel in nearly every measurable sense. (And it happens to contain one of Macdonald's most painfully beautiful sentences: "His expression turned faraway, further and further away, as if his mind was climbing back over the curve of time to the source of his life.") The casual reader probably won't even notice the allusions to Gatsby, and those who have enjoyed Macdonald's other books will like this one, too. But it's emphatically not the best thing he ever wrote. show less

Like others, I assume, I picked this one up because I saw that the Coen's were writing a screenplay of it, and maybe direct it. If so, it's kind of an odd one for them, in that there's not a lot of action necessarily, and the story is somewhat convoluted (maybe not the right word), and as is often the case with Macdonald, reaches into the past quite a bit.

Fat rich college kid Peter hires Archer to prevent the girl he's in love with from marrying someone he doesn't trust, and who he thinks will not be good for her. This leads Archer into quite a tangled web, eventually involving the supposed suicide of the girl's father, seven years in the past, and the mysterious background of the man she wants to marry. Things play out much differently show more than you suppose they will as you follow it, as is Macdonald's way. He's really very good at portraying his characters, and though Archer seems like he would be cynical, he professes at one point in this book to "love people." But this is a hard crew to love, though Archer is attracted to one of the most broken characters in the novel, and also to one who is doing a good job of making her way in the world. A pretty engrossing novel, and I am looking forward to seeing what the Coens will do with it.

It's to Macdonald's credit that when he's describing his characters and Archer's attitude towards them, he doesn't get cynical. He portrays them the way they are, and though some are pretty despicable, Archer and Macdonald understand their motives and portray them well. show less

Great style, and read immediately after a dreadful fantasy novel. The comparison made MacDonald's prose register like cold mountain water a mouthful of dust.

But, but, the ending falls apart in an implausible way. So much so that it breaks the noir tone, becomes weird, unrealistic, theatrical. We were all doing fine until we left the post-stroke gambler and went back to the improbable professor.

“It’s dangerous to get what you want, you know. It sets you up for tragedy.”

Something I know all too well…

Who is Francis Martel? Archer is on the case to find out who, and what, he really is! It's a little slower than other Archer books that I have read, and maybe a bit less exciting. But, Macdonald is a wonderful writer, and I've listed a few quotes from this book that really appealed to me!

“: a dangerous sexual liaison, hypocrisy, guilt and imprisonment, the human soul trapped in a gland.”

"You married the wrong man at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, I told her silently.”

“There was something a little female about his movements, and more than a little ominous, as if his huge belly was pregnant with death.”

I have no other works by this author nor have read any before, so it was a welcome new start for me. He was married (apparently) to Margaret Millar, who I have read and can recommend, but did not know that when I picked up this book, but was influenced by reason this edition was published as part of the Crime masterworks series, which I cannot resist in a second hand shop.

Set in the 1950s- 60s west coast USA, Lew Archer (the protagonist in some 13 books in the series) is a private detective, who is efficient, does not habitually carry a gun nor throw a punch, and who wants to help people. I don't say this as suggesting that these are meant to his defining features, in the way that Sherlock Holmes wears a dear stalker or that DCI Banks show more likes a scotch at the end of the day to unwind or that John Rebus likes a drink most times of the day, but rather to suggest that Archer is not your typical rough and ready PI. But he is efficient, thorough and worldly.

The read is very much a noir read and a very good one at that, save that the last 30 pages (of 300) fell away badly and (to my mind) left a very weak resolution of the many loose ends. I don't think the denouement was properly the subject of sufficient, valid clues. Sure it was open, logically, to have reached that conclusion, but not in a fair way.

But until then, it was a great read, which justifies its 4 star rating. I hope that this is a once off flaw, in which case I look forward to reading more of Macdonald/Archer. If it is emblematic of them however, it will suggest that Macdonald is the noir equivalent of Phillip Glass, a composer who I very much like, but who at least during part of his career, had no idea as to how to bring a piece to an end, other than to apply a guillotine and bring it to an absolute abrupt end.

As to the plot? PI Archer is engaged by mid 20s 2nd/3rd generation rich Peter to investigate blow in Francis Martel, supposedly rich and French and a political refugee on the run from the then French Government, who sweeps Peter's fiancee (actual or soon to be?) Virginia (Ginny) off her feet, and whom Peter wants to get back. Set in a small, coastal town which has not only an exclusive Tennis Club and lots of money, along with an underbelly (literally) across the rail tracks, but also (it is not giving anything away that is not on the back cover of the Crime Masterclass edition I was reading) there is gambling and gambling debts and ambition financially and socially aplenty.

Worth a read if mid 20th century US west coast noir is your thing, but I keen to know if Macdonald can go one better.

Big Ship

9 April 2022 show less

review of
Ross MacDonald's Black Money
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 20-21, 2021

The spree of MacDonald bks to read & review continues. In the countdown, this is "4". Only 3 left to read & review after this. Then? Who knows?! Maybe I'll grow a 2nd head. Nothing better to do.

"Montevista is a residential community adjacent to and symbiotic with the harbor city of Pacific Point. It has only one small shopping center, which calls itself the Village Square. Among its mock-rustic shops the Montevistans play at being simple villagers the way the courtiers of Versailles pretended to be peasants." - p 6

Yes, but did Versailles have a small shopping mall that talked to itself? Even the aristocracy doesn't have everything.

"I waited in the show more dim hallway on a high-backed Spanish chair which Torquemada had made with his own hands." - p 17

In other words, it was painful to sit on.

""I don't often drink so early myself." I noticed that the book in his hands was upside down. He hadn't wanted to be found just drinking. He closed the book and laid it on the table. "The Book of the Dead," he said." - p 18

We're only on p 18 & we've already breezed thru French royalty, the Spanish Inquisition, & ancient Ancient like there's no tomorrow - but how did he know that the man w/ the bk wasn't an upside-down reader, perhaps w/ an upside-down brain or upside-down eyes?! Never overlook the improbable as a possibility.

"Jamieson wrinkled his forehead. He picked up his highball, saw that it was nearly gone, and got up to make himself another. He was tall, but thin and frail. He moved like an old man, but I suspected that he wasn't much older than I was—fifty at most." - p 19

Prematurely aged by the cultures that the bk's ripped thru so quickly.

"The cement walk which led up to the front door was an obstacle course of roller skates, a bicycle, a tricycle. A girl of six or seven answered the door. She had a dutch bob and enormous watching eyes.

""Daddy says that you can join him in the study,"

"She led us through the trampled-looking living room into the kitchen. A woman was bowed over the sink in a passive-aggressive attitude, peeling potatoes. A boy of about three was hitting her in the legs and chortling." - p 31

Kids, can't live w/ them, CAN live w/o them - but then what's our DNA going to do?

Daddy provides questions to test the suspect's 'Frenchness' w/:

"He read aloud from his sheets: "One. Who wrote the original Les Liaisons dangereuses and who made the modernized film version? Choderlos de Laclos wrote the original, and Roger Vadim made the movie.

""Two. Complete the phrase: 'Hypocrite lecteur . . .' Answer: Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère—from the opening poem of Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal.

""Three. Name a great French painter who believed Dreyfus was guilty. Answer: Degas.

""Four. What gland did Descartes designate as the residence of the human soul? Answer: the pineal gland.

""Five. Who was mainly responsible for getting Jean Genet released from prison? Answer: Jean-Paul Sartre. Is this the sort of thing you had in mind?"" - p 36

That was fun, the bk was worth it just for that. It might be even more fun if we switched the answers around. E.G.:

'Who was mainly responsible for getting Jean Genet released from prison?'

'Answer: the pineal gland.'

Or let's take a different tack: imagine that you've got to come up w/ 5 questions to ask someone who's pretending to be an educated native of a country you're familiar w/. The idea is that if they can't answer all the questions properly then they're probably an imposter. Imagine the country in question is the USA:

1. Who tells the truth? Tucker Carlson or Amy Goodman?
2. Do Black Lives Matter or do All Lives Matter?
3. Which President served the interest of the majority of Americans?
4. Who are the Good Guys, the Republicans or the Democrats?
5. How long should the quarantine last in order for us to become immortal?

See the answers at the bottom of this review.

Hm, maybe I shd try a different set of questions:

1. What American author told a story about a guy sleeping for a long time?
2. What American bandmaster had marching bands play different tunes at the same time?
3. What Hollywood actress coinvented a radio guidance system using frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology?
4. Which state has the most mass shootings?
5. What American writer's bks are you least likely to ever even THINK ABOUT READING?

If you can't answer those 10 questions correctly you're probably an illegal immigrant, in fact, I seriously doubt that you're even human.

""Where was Martel born, Mr. Stoll?"

""I have asked myself that question. He claims to be Parisian, Mrs. Bagshaw tells me. But from what little I heard of it, his French is not Paris French. It is too provincial, too formal. Perhaps it is Canadian, or South American. I don't know. I am not a linguistic scientist."" - p 47

Personally, I think Martel was born right under yr nose but you were blacked out drunk at the time, fool.

While the patient front-to-back reader of this bk has to wait 'til p 128 for the tie-in to the bk's title, YOU, dear Springboard Review reader, can reach it, thx to MY ministrations, at this early date.

""You think he was dodging taxes?"

""I'm sure of it. They're doing it all the time in Vegas. The money they hold back is known as 'black money,' and it's used to finance about half of the illegal enterprises in the country, from Cosa Nostra on down."" - p four billion

& do I get any THANKS?! NnnnnoooOOooOOoOooo. Ingrates! Fools!

ANYWAY, a buncha other really interesting things happen in this story but nothing really matters until we get to junk mail.

"An interesting looking envelope from Spain had pictures of General Franco on the stamps and was addressed to Señor Lew Archer. The letter inside said: Cordiales Saludos: This comes to you from far-off Spain to call your attention to our new Fiesta line of furniture with its authentically Spanish motif as exciting as a corrida, as colorful as a flamenco dance. Come see it at any one of our Greater Los Angeles stores."

"The piece of junk mail I liked best was a folder from the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. Among the attractions of the city it mentioned swimming, golf, tennis, bowling, water-skiing, eating, going to shows, and going to church, but not a word about gambling." - p 175

SO, there you have it - &, oh, yes, some people died & that sort of thing.

Answers to 1st set of questions:

1. Answer: Neither.
2. Answer: Both.
3. Answer: None.
4. Answer: Neither.
5. Answer: Forever.

Answers to 2nd set of questions:

1. Answer: Washington Irving
2. Answer: George Ives
3. Answer: Hedy Lamar
4. Answer: California
5. Answer: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE show less