Customer Reviews

Black Money

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hammet, Chandler, McBain, Pronzini, Block and Parker are all masters of the American detective novel. The first two created the form, the last four continue to carry it out with both continued freshness and comfortable familiarity. The most perfect form, however, is the series of Lew Archer stories and novels written by the late Ross MacDonald. Like Chandler an immigant, he caught the smell and the feel of Southern California better than a native. He also crystalized the inner calmness and unwavering honor of the classic private eye, without awkwardness and sentiment. Perhaps the greatest tribute that could be given to MacDonald the writer is that he only wrote one story, but wrote it so well that each time was a new experience. This story is just that, a fresh look at the classic life and conflict in a Southern California that never existed but is real and beloved to everyone who admires and appreciates this very American form of literature.

An elegant masterpiece of crime fiction. Vivid and unsentimental, with crisp stylish prose, "Black Money" shows thepower of Ross Macdonald work, and Black Lizard should keep 'em coming. By the end of the book, I was experiencing so many emotions I didn't know what to feel.. Highly recommended

Veteran private eye Lew Archer finds himself hobnobbing with the country club set and an academic type or two as he wends his way through this very engaging mystery. Hired to investigate a mysterious stranger who claims to be a wealthy French aristocrat, Archer manages to uncover a number of diverse yet interrelated scandals and crimes dating back a dozen years and more.

The intricate plot unfolds against the backdrop of a quiet suburban town just to the south of LA, with a short sojourn to one of Las Vegas' less reputable casinos. There are a number of interesting characters and the well crafted narrative twists and turns in some very intriguing ways. Moreover, Macdonald's smart, insightful prose makes Black Money compellingly readable.

Ross Macdonald was in top form when he wrote Black Money. Read it, it's a real page turner.

Ross Macdonald writes in the tradition of the American detective story as developed by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. MacDonald is definatly inferior to these masters but still worth reading.
The language of the classic American Detective story is the language of the street, and MacDonald can write with skill. His hero/narrator, Archer, is a man who raised himself out of the slums; a classic "tough guy" with a street wise knowledge of how people act and how to handle them. MacDonald, however, is never really comfortable with this view of life. His background is that of an academic (Ph. D, taught school, studied psyciatry) and it shows in all the wrong ways. We often hear little mini-lectures on the inner workings of the characters and are occasionally treated to such literary allusions as Dante and Beatrice. These things clash badly with the "tough guy" tone of the book, and this inconsistancy is MacDonalds most serious defect.
When it comes to plotting, however, MacDonald is excellent. His plots are cleaver, complex and have the feel of truth about them - something that is often lacking in today's mysterys. When he isn't writing like a collage professor, Macdonald can write dialogue that has the dangerous and gritty feel of the underworld. And there are moments that are priceless. One of those moments is when as when the victim, who has had most of her family murdered, lies down in a pool of blood next to her dead lover/murderer, the man responsible for the murders and also the man she loved. She lays there looking at him until the police come.
While he may not have the consistancy of Hammett or Chandler, MacDonald has many of the things that make American detective fiction work, and this book is one of his best.

As a mystery author with my first novel in initial release, I want to state here that Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series ruined my life. It showed me how powerful mystery writing can be and led me to my writing aspirations in this literary field. BLACK MONEY is among my favorite Macdonald books. It's an updated version of THE GREAT GATSBY, moved to the southern California coast. Archer is hired to investigate a young man who arrives in an affluent coastal city presenting himself as an aristocratic Frenchman. He wins the heart of the most desirable maiden in town, and people are suspicious about this aristocrat's background. Archer investigates and uncovers to sorry truth about several different people. BLACK MONEY is an American crime fiction classic.

It's completely shocking to me that if you go into a superchain bookstore these days - (I'm not writing about Amazon, which will usually get it for you if it's in print) but you know the stores I mean, - if you go into them and browse the mystery sections, Ross MacDonald is barely represented. Shocking, because he truly deserves the William Goldman NY Times quote that graces the covers of most of his books: "The finest series of detective novels ever written by an American." His Lew Archer novels truly are among the best we have, and although all eighteen aren't equally as great, they are all usually a cut above the rest of what's out there.

I cut my teeth on Chandler; and his three excellent Marlowe novels, The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye, are beautiful, superlative books. Hammett's got The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and Red Harvest. But MacDonald will keep you engrossed through eighteen incredibly plotted, almost always puzzling, hard boiled mysteries that surpass in some respects those six mentioned novels, and most anything by any later writer. Even after you're on to his method you'll still find it hard, if not impossible, to decipher the resolutions to his mysteries before he presents them. Black Money may not be equal to MacDonald's best, which are unmatched by anything in the genre, but the chances are good that its plot and mystery will keep you guessing until the very end.

Just about all the Lew Archer/Mcdonald mysteries have a very nice South Cal feel, circa 1950-1970, interesting characters, often university types, and tormented families with skeletons hidden in the closet. Lost relationships, long past deaths, and folks who do not seem to have a murderous streak, are featured in about all the Archer books. So for a smooth and interesting ride through these parts, one can do a lot worse than reading R. Macdonald. Why only 4 stars? Because there is a formulaic tendency where the books seem very similar, and somewhat dated. And the characters and circumstances are not really fleshed out like many current mystery masters. Even so, you can never really be disappointed with an Archer, just as you always know, and cannot really be disappointed, say, in a Starbucks CoffeeShop experience, and I mean this in the best sense!

Of all of Macdonald's books _Black Money_ is the best. Although its solution does not shock as does the one in_The Chill,_ the novel has none of the sentimentalized affirmations that some of his others, including _The Chill,_ do. Macdonald's themes are the inescapable persistence of evil and the pervasive corruption of the American ideal. Here they acquire added force because the style is even more restrained than usual.

Without quite reaching the status of icons, the characters in _Black Money_ nonetheless achieve a stature that makes much contemporary writing seem small and narcissistic. It is emblematic of this grandeur that the detective figure fades in importance as the plot moves toward its genuinely tragic conclusion.

Just re-read Black Money... perhaps it is MacDonald at his zenith, a bit before great fame found him, but after he had fully developed his stride. Some of his later books seem too contrived. In Black Money, not all the youth are innocents corrupted by curdled California elders... the Martel character in particular is refreshingly different from MacDonald's usual suspects. That many of the middle-aged American characters end up dead (or worse) certainly rings the bell for me. Very highly recommended.

The 1960's were Ross MacDonald's glory years, when he transcended his early Chandler/Hammett-type mysteries to become one of the best mystery writers this country has ever seen. Written right in the middle of that period (1966), Black Money is disappointing. It's certainly readable, but it lacks the electricity of MacDonald's best books, the plot is far less dynamic than most of his work, and worst of all, the book gets off to a very shaky start from which it recovers only gradually (the "French" character from whom the story takes off is so clearly bogus, and is presented so clumsily by MacDonald, that the reader almost wants him to disappear immediately so the real story can start).