::AMAZON REVIEWS::

Fair to Middlin'
Look, I like Ross MacDonald, I really do. I've read the majority of the Archer series and have been mostly entertained by it. The set-ups and pay-offs are somewhat intriguing and the character development is adequate. Still, The Galton Case is no better or worse than other MacDonald novels. The formula just gets tiresome after so many books. Case presented, interview, interview, red herring, interview, Archer (shot at, cold-cocked, sapped), re-interview, suspect emerges, case closed. Yet the novels do have merit. BUT to mention him in the same breath as Chandler and Hammett is a bit of a stretch. MacDonald relies heavily on metaphor, so much so that they become distracting. In one novel, I counted no less than 15 within the first 25 pages and the other books are very similar. So here's the deal. If you're looking for gumshoe lite, Archer is your guy. A decent little series to help you while away the time until something really good comes along.

A disappointment, though not without modest value.
I've recently discovered the haunting and unusual novels of Margaret Millar, who was born in Canada, began writing novels in the early 40s and eventually moved to California during that same decade with her husband Kenneth Millar.

Kenneth was the real name of Ross McDonald, and while both husband and wife were successful authors during their lifetimes, only Kenneth/Ross became "famous." Few know Margaret Millar's name today, although her books are rich and ambitious, many of them mysteries to some extent. Because her work is so good, I decided I should read a novel by her more famous husband.

Through the thoroughly random circumstance of having found "The Galton Case" first, I've read it and have to say that I was somewhat disappointed. Lew Archer, the protagonist, seems drawn from archetypal West Coast detectives we know from the past (Chandler, et al.) but without the vividness of his predecessors.

There are aspects of how this novel plays out, especially in the last few chapters, that bring a greater sense of dignity and subtler sensibilities to the proceedings in the 11th Hour. But for the most part the novel feels perfunctory and claustrophobic, too full of coincidences and with only the minor characters of any more than perfunctory interest.

McDonald/Millar also seems to try too hard at times, hauling in words here or there that seem to have been rescued from a thesaurus and thrown in to pepper an otherwise unadventurous prose style. The Lew Archer character, while technically the only character whose interior life is revealed to us (since it is told in the first person), still seems underdrawn and even tedious at times, too much a walking gumshoe cliche for my tastes.


There are also several times in the narrative where the reader will say to himself: "why didn't Lew Archer call this-or-that person? Why didn't he report these big clues back to the police before placing himself in harm's way without telling anyone where he was going?" You could say that without this kind of behavior, many plot details could not be achieved -- yet the very process of our having to ask ourselves these questions about his judgment take us somewhat out of the momentum of the book itself, distracting us by making us think enough about some bad choices the author makes to break our focus from the narrative proceedings.
To his credit, I will admit that his portraits of the more economically-deprived, poorer, working-class people within the novel are more poignantly and sympathetically drawn than anyone with any money. If there is one clear strength in this book it would be the vignettes of the "have-nots" among the characters in this novel. But that quality, admirable as it is, doesn't save the rather tedious, workaday tone of the book as a whole. It only gives it occasional but genuine gleams of distinction in an otherwise rather hackneyed-seeming and derivative story.

So while this was only my first Lew Archer mystery, based on this one I'm in no real hurry to read more of them. But I do recommend to all Mrs. Millar's novels, since, based on this sample of her husband's work, she was by far the more talented of the two.

Fast paced, satisfying.
Written some one and a half decades after Ross Macdonald began his professional literary career, The Galton Case has the distinction of being the author's breakthrough novel. So said no less an expert on the subject than Macdonald himself. It was in the pages of this book that Ross Macdonald succeeded for the first time in saying exactly what he wanted to say in the way he wanted to say it.

The story is complex yet satisfyingly tidy in structure. Seventy-three year old Maria Galton is a fabulously wealthy resident of Santa Teresa, California. She wishes to be reunited with her son Tony who, because of a family rift, has not been seen in over 20 years. Lew Archer is hired by Mrs. Galton's attorney to do what he can to locate Tony.

Several clues suggest that the missing man may have moved to the San Francisco area under an assumed name. Archer wastes no time in putting together the whys and hows of Tony Galton's disappearance. To reveal any more of the plot would be unfair.

Suffice it to say that the carefully crafted narrative is fast paced and extraordinarily compelling. Macdonald has suffused The Galton Case with a very appealing style of prose that is both smooth and highly descriptive. And the realistically depicted cast of characters is an exceedingly interesting one.

The underlying messages Ross Macdonald sought to convey in this book and most of his other fiction come through loud and clear:
-One's destiny is largely determined at birth.
-Depriving the individual of his or her birthright can only lead to disasterous results.
-Family is the most important aspect of our lives yet, all too often, family units are irretrievably dysfunctional.

By any and all measures imaginable, The Galton Case ranks among the best detective novels ever written. A very enthusiastic 5 stars.

Possibly, the ultimate Ross Macdonald novel
Fairly new to Ross MacDonald, I am finding his books superb dramatic novels told as mysteries...the pieces of the poignant story are given to you jigsaw style, but you still experience the power of the story as they are pieced together. Lew Archer's role is that of the puzzle solver, and you are not as involved with him and his character development as you are with the characters.

This is possibly his most satisfying story and like most of the other reviewers, I choose to let you discover the story for yourself. If you have read previous MacDonald, you may spot elements of the story before they're completely revealed, but this hardly will diminish your enjoyment of the book. It might even enhance it. There's much more of interest here than just the identity of the murderer. There's a lot of figuring out the essences of the people involved, and they do act consistently.

There is one minor stretch of credibility in this particular book, one rather unlikely coincidence, but it's a realistic coincidence, one which fits nicely as one of the coincidences that do occur in real life and does not seem like the author's contrivance.

I don't think it makes any appreciable difference whether or not you've read any other MacDonald works or not. This will read well as the first one or the later one.

One of the great mystery novels, for sure.

The Lost Boy
This novel was also anthologized in the "Archer At Large" omnibus, which contains a revealing, fascinating foreward by MacDonald, who stated that The Galton Case was his "break-through book." And then he diclosed the numerous--and poignant--autobiographical parallels he had with the novel.

The Galton Case has a realistic, painful and angry intensity not present in any other Archer novels I've read--perhaps because MacDonald had put more of his life and sorrows into this book than in any other; into the examination of how the sins of the fathers ruin their sons' lives. For MacDonald every family is riddled with moral cancer: skeletons can never be fully shoved into the closet, especially because Archer, relentless and haunted, will bring them back to life.

It's true that MacDonald basically wrote the same work throughout most of his novels. All work out the same issues of buried identity, familial guilt and moral corrpution. This is not an entirely damning fact--it just means that Archer was a limited, minor artist (like Hammett and Chandler) and that he was fixated with a primal story that he retold continually. "The Galton Case" may be the finest version of that story--the most wounding, convincing and saddening.

As a stylist, MacDonald lacks Hammett's laconic grace and Chandler's brilliant flamboyance. Parts of this book can be awkward, while other parts display figurative language of uncommon acuteness and insight. MacDonald chose to work with a sparer, elegantly economic and less sensationalistic style--his sentences literally work up a quiet storm.
As a storyteller MacDonald is deeper, more human and more interesting than either Hammett or Chandler--because he is genuinely intersted in other people besides his detective. He doesn't make Lew Archer cooler(Sam Spade)or simply better (Philip Marlowe) than his clients. Archer is more like a hard-boiled, tough detective-shrink dealing with clients whose neuroses can be dangerous. His plots are neither ingenious displays of dedeuctive/inductive insight (a la Sherlock Holmes) or outrageously complicated messes (as in Chandler). Instead they resemble the gradual construction of a scandalous family tree, with hidden connections and relations acumulating into a damning account of old sins.

Unlike Spade and Marlowe, Lew Archer genuinely gives a damn about and sympathizes with his clients, who must deal with the horrible buried truths he discovers. MacDonald's true subject is in how families and friends are capable of hurting and crippling each other. The Taiwanese film director Edward Yang once gave a chilling coment on human relationships:"The bombs we plant in each other are still ticking." That quote goes striaght to the heart of MacDonald's mystery novels. They possess a fundamental humanism that's often missing not only from most crime stories, but from most novels and movies period.

You'll notice that I really haven't said anything in specific about "The Galton Case." The less you know about it before reading it, the better. Enjoy the story, and how it pierces straight into its target.