Customer Reviews

The Barbarous Coast

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
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OK, the first half of this book is great. Five stars. I felt like I was reading one of MacDonald's very best, akin to Hammetts "Big Sleep". However, once MacDonald's sights get set on a group of characters, he just cant seem to stop from circling them over and over again. It got so that I felt like I was caught in a whirl wind, each page would re-visit someone and each page would shift the plot direction. Its sort of funny, but I felt like the story sort of lost itself and became almost too muddled to discipher just after Archer sustained a second serious concussion.

Archer is one of the classic series in this genre. Its just great. And this book should be read along with the others. However, I would suggest that you not start here due to the fact that it wont cast the very best light on MacDonald and his prowess.

"The Barbarous Coast" is a perfect example of a "hard-boiled" detective story. The "hard-boiled" detective story has been analyzed, re-analyzed, and over-analyzed. Ditto for the leading authors of the genre Hammett, Chandler, and Ross MacDonald. Consequently, it can be difficult to look at a novel of this genre as a stand-alone story.

In "The Barbarous Coast" PI Lew Archer takes on both the Hollywood establishment and the Mob as a simple assignment of tracking down a missing wife turns into a multiple murder case. The plot is very good, and the characters are excellent. Much of the strength of the story is in MacDonald's depiction of the southern California atmosphere: the wealth, decadence, and underlying fear of those who have made it, the regret and the disillusionment of the those who have almost made it, the sad continuing striving of those who will never make it but who still cling to the dream.

I enjoyed reading "The Barbarous Coast", but I did not find it satisying. None of the book's weaknesses is a deal breaker, but their culumative effect keeps me from giving it a top rating. Examples: The plot seemed unnecessarily conplicated, Archer kept getting beat up too frequently, the Mob connection just didn't fit in well, several cliche scenes.

It's nice to visit old friends. I haven't read any of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels in a long, long time. Macdonald's prose hasn't lost any of its punch for me over the years. Like Anthony Boucher says, "{Macdonald)...writes like a son of a bitch."

Originally published in 1956, The Barbarous Coast has PI Lew Archer nosing around Malibu, looking for a freaked-out Canadian's wife, a high-diving bombshell, Hester Campbell (in the vein of Esther Williams, for those who might not get it). The fact that the guy has punk hair makes the character seem awfully strange for the book's original publication date, but that's okay.

Hester has disappeared without a trace. Lew starts poking his nose into things at the Channel Club, the ritziest, snobbiest country club in the Pacific Coast. Before long he's up to his neck in blackmail, beauties, and a two-year-old unsolved murder that seems to hang around like last week's fish odor.

When Macdonald passed in 1983, America lost one its greatest crime writers. However, The Barbarous Coast is not Macdonald's best Lew Archer novel. The tales twists and turns at random that is more confusing than surprising. Sometimes, it's even hard to follow. For the life of me, I can't remember how Lew got messed up in this case.

One of the things that interests me, going back to the authors that have been a part of our American cultural landscape, is: Does the writing stand the test of time? This book does...the prose is magnificent. The difference between reading a vintage crime novel and a contemporary crime novel is like watching "Perry Mason" and "Law and Order." Only the times dictate the color and level of morality that we find acceptable.

While the scenery may be old-fashioned, and The Barbarous Coast may not be the best Lew Archer episode, it's still a good story. I've added the Lew Archer novels to my to-read list.

Armchair Interviews says: Another Lew Archer convert.

This book reads like a movie, very fast and snappy. It's the first book by Ross MacDonald I've read and I enjoyed it a lot. The central mystery is interesting but the best parts are just individual scenes that really zip. Lew Archer is a detective in the classic mold. He's tough but he has a sensitive side. You know he's going to find all kinds of bad stuff as the story goes along, and he does. A very pleasurable read, all in all.

Sometimes even very talented writers like Ross Macdonald will miss the mark. The Barbarous Coast, I'm sorry to say, is an example of a great novelist not living up to his potential.

Oh, it all starts off interestingly enough. Ross Macdonald's favorite and most famous fictional character, the hardboiled PI Lew Archer is recruited to help a naive young Canadian locate his missing bride. Her name is Hester and she's a native Californian, the daughter of long dead silent film star, Raymond Campbell. As Archer pokes around Hester's last known haunt, an exclusive Malibu country club, he learns of an unsolved murder that took place there just under 2 years before.

So far so good. Unfortunately, the narrative then begins to devolve into a poorly coordinated, multifaceted saga of murder and blackmail that unsuccessfully tries to cover too many bases. Macdonald introduces a number of supporting characters; a greedy and lecherous movie studio owner, his schizophrenic wife, a Las Vegas gangster with homosexual tendencies, a washed up boxer turned actor and Hester's sister Rina, a psychiatric nurse.
Also introduced are Hester's mother and her aforementioned husband, both of whom rather surprisingly get lost in the shuffle.

Further detracting from the book's appeal are Macdonald's, shall we say, less than universally accepted theories of mental illness. Theories he does not hesitate to present as facts on a par with the law of gravity.

Ross Macdonald fans expect his novels to be intricately plotted and many would be disappointed if they were not. But the Barbarous Coast is a disjointed collection of plot threads that ultimately fail to blend together. It appears as though he tried to cram too much material into this relatively short book.

A rare disappointment from an author capable of much better.