Customer Reviews

Chill, The

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

MacDonald is rightfully considered one of the three great hardboiled detective novelists (along with Hammett and Chandler). Rereading this novel confirmed what I thought the first time I read it: this is the best detective novel that I have ever read.

It is also the most appropriately titled novel that I have ever encountered. The first time I read this I was lying in the sun beside the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. When I reached the moment when the mystery was solved, a chill literally ran up my spine. One of the truly creepy moments of my life. Hyperbole rules among reviewers here, but this one would get a higher rating if I were allowed.

I have read most of MacDonald novels, despite the fact that I really don't spend much time reading mystery or detective fiction. His earliest books are good, but not great. But about four or five novels into the Lew Archer series MacDonald (in real life Professor Kenneth Millar, and husband of fellow mystery writer Margaret Millar)found his voice and his theme. In all his best books the theme is: the sins of the father shall be visited upon the second and third generations (I didn't check my OT for a more precise quotation). A typical plot from his best novels is as follows: Archer is asked to look into this or that problem (a person has disappeared, has left, is being plagued by someone, etc., etc.). Gradually upon conducting his investigation his role shifts from detective to archaeologist, until he eventually discovers the troubles that he has been asked to look into have causes reaching back ten, twenty, or even fifty years. The seed planted by an act decades earlier has sprouted in the present, destroying those who are otherwise innocent. (MacDonald always reminds me of Yeats's "Leda and the Swan," where Zeus's rape of Leda will eventually result in the birth of Helen and all the tragedy of Troy: "A shudder in the loins engenders there/The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/And Agamemnon dead.")

All of MacDonald is more than readable, but someone wanting to proceed from THE CHILL (which really is his finest work) should look at THE DROWNING POOL or THE INSTANT ENEMY.

Along with Hammett, Cain and Chandler, Ross Macdonald is a pioneer of the literate mystery novel.

In "The Chill" (written in 1963), Lew Archer has a missing persons case that leads to three murders committed over a twenty year period that he must tie together.

There is plenty of action, twists, reversals and suspense throughout...adultery, cons, frame-ups, blackmail.

The plot is complicated and complex; filled with plentiful characters (many with aliases). You have to pay attention and keep score.

The ending is a major surprise.

It is easy to see why it is among the IMBA's "100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century."

Well worth a second read.

"The Chill" was recommended to me as Ross MacDonald's darkest book, and after finishing it one can confidently say it's hard to imagine a story with a bleaker conclusion. The author springs a gothic surprise ending that owes as much to late Alfred Hitchcock as Raymond Chandler. It's still stunning, but it must have really been a shocker back in 1963 when the novel was first published. Once again detective Lew Archer delves into a case that involves public corruption and private family dysfunction by the wealthy. It was Faulkner who said "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." I suppose that is the motto of most noir, and especially this one. You should read this immediately.

The beauty and insight of MacDonald's work made me look him up. I wanted to know more about this amazing writer that I had never heard of before. Turns out that MacDonald served as a naval officer, then got a Ph.D. in Literature. He writes with the discipline of the naval officer, and with the depth of understanding of human nature of an academic.

I found more insight in one paragraph of this novel than I did in the last ten books I read. Line after line he tosses out these stunningly clear observations, each of them a gem. He does it casually, manfully; I've never read anything like it. At one point he described a woman in one sentence, she was just a wallpaper character, there to decorate the 'nursing home' where a badly traumatized character was placed. This woman was not even part of the plot, but I knew her instantly, and from her, the room, the building and the city where they all reside. I wish I could quote it, but it went something like, "She looked at me from under her hooded eyes and then turned away, her dark wavy hair cascading like sorrows down her back." He weaves the details about the real characters even more richly.

Published in 1964, MacDonald employs an unusual early 20th century American English that is at once crisp and casual. His words carry the same simple beauty as a very good men's suit of that time; such straight, almost chiseled lines and understated colors that you almost don't notice the opulence of the fabric from which it is cut, until you touch it (or in this case, it touches you). That's when you know you've just encountered something extraordinary.

MacDonald is far too masculine a writer to appreciate his work being called poetry, but in fact his work is better poetry than I've read in many an anthology. It crackles along with a vibrant electricity through an engaging and suspenseful mystery plot. Lew Archer could be the prototype for the archetypal stoic American man, intelligent, intuitive, creative and scrupulously honest, and like so many forgotten hard-working men, just a little bit heartbroken. Archer sleuthes his way through an articulate and canny America that is gone forever now. Very poignant.

A classic.

***

Addendum: I read a few more things by Ross MacDonald, and none of them come even close to this book, in fact they were kind of duds. You can skip everything else by Ross MacDonald, but The Chill is a real gem.

Ross Macdonald could flat out write. His style is at times very 'Chandleresque', (he really enjoyed Chandler's books)but he brings something else to this story that even the master Raymond Chandler wouldn't have.

The word is 'dimension'. Where Chander and Hammett were known for there 'hardboiled' approach, Macdonald's Lew Archer is obviously a man of keen intelligence. He is also one cool customer, a flawed man in a flawed world.

The story concerns a murder that could be connected to

another murder that happened many years before. And, maybe another. The plot reveals itself slowly, I wasn't quite sure where it was going, but the writing is so crisp and poetic, that i just read, and let it all happen.

This is a wonderful book, written by a man who deserves all the praise in the world for bringing something else to the mystery novel.

Just read it, and enjoy.

For those of us who keep going back again and again to read

the novels of Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell

Hammett, Ernest Hemingway and Peter Matthiessen, this is

without question one of the greatest works of that group.

Once Ross Macdonald (Ken Millar) broke through with the Galton Case,

every novel from then on formed one of the great canons of

American literature. The N.Y. Times Book Review had

The Underground Man as its front page review in 1970.

Well-deserved recongnition for a writer at his zenith.

What Conan Doyle was to London in its era, so is Ross Macdonald to

California in its era. A great writer on the edge of a culture.

The Chill stands with the Zebra-Striped Hearse and The

Underground Man alongside The Long Goodbye and The Big

Sleep as American writing at its very best.

To be an American (and a Californian) is to read these

books.

So subtle, so psychological, so empathetic, so hard.

Modern noir --- the epitome of great craftsmanship.

At the top of 5 stars. The very top. One of the proud

novels on the Knopf list.

Moody, creepy, complex, and sad, this is MacDonald's best book. I think its as good as Chandler (and that is very good indeed). This was written in the early 60s when RM was at his peak, and manages probably his best surprise as well as his most memorably creepy denouement. All the Archers from this time are excellent, but this one stands out.

I enjoy reading MacDonald's Lew Archer books. They come from a different era and as others have noted in these reviews lean heavily on his contemporaries sense of style. Chandler and Hammett are the two heavies remembered best from Macdonalds days, though I would also throw the creator of the Perry Mason books, Erle Gardner.

For my money, The chill is just a little too complicated and the strands of the plot are over the top. I just cant see many of the characters here acting in the way they do, or pulling off the stunts that set this story in motion. I cant really go into detail on this matter because I dont want to give the ending away. It seems to me however, that a lot of what gets wrapped up in the end here is ludicrous.

The story itself starts with Archer being out of his element. He is in a town giving testimony in a trail when he is approached by a young man asking Archer to find his wife. The marriage has yet to be consummated and she is missing. Archer goes into action and pretty soon he is magically unraveling a series of murders dating back up to thirty years and across the country.

The writing and characters are good enough here, I really enjoyed every page. The story/plot itself forces me to knock off a couple of stars. If you disagree with me, just think about it for a while and try to imagine any of the several insane paths that the characters take in order for this story to work.

The Chill, Ross Macdonald's 11th Lew Archer novel, and his 17th novel overall, takes the formula and shakes it up to new levels of perplexity. After a successful testimony in a trial, Lew Archer is preparing to leave Pacific Point when he meets young Alex Kincaid, a mixed up young bridegroom whose wife has apparently him on their honeymoon. Reluctantly, Archer agrees to look into the disappearance of Dolly Kincaid, and with his customary efficiency he discovers that she hasn't gone far, just to the local college where she has enrolled under a false name, and taken a job as a chauffeur in exchange for free room and board at the Dean's home. The mystery of what ended the Kincaid marriage remains, though the visit of a middle-aged stranger from out of town upset young Mrs. Kincaid. Maybe I've read too many Ross Macdonald books, but I had a hunch that Dolly found out that Alex was really her brother, half brother or step brother, exactly the kind of thing that is always happening to lovers on the soaps. Well, it turned out I was dead wrong. Was it, then, a revelation of sexual preference that made consummating the marriage impossible for one or the other party? The only one with any answers seems to be Helen Haggerty, a fortyish yet still super-seductive femme fatale professor who lives in a glass house (literally) and vamps Archer while defraying questions about her mentee, Dolly Kincaid.

From reading the biography of Ross Macdonald we learn that many of his troubled young characters were drawn from life, from his daughter's checkered career. But does Dolly ever seem like a real person? Right at the same moment, across the Atlantic, Agatha Christie was doing the same character, over and over again, the mentally anguished waif who might be cured through unconditional love, and if you ask me, doing her a little more convincingly.

While pondering these alternatives I realized that Archer does very little detective work, though he asks everyone prying questions and that's how he gets his answers. Every suspect and witness is equally forthcoming, ludicrously so, and after about fifty pages of this it becomes ludicrous. Doesn't he meet anyone who prefers to keep a secret? More to the point, does he never meet anyone but those who have witnessed a murder when they were a child, a murder that has long roots and which extends its tentacles right into today? Both Dolly and Helen are haunted by different murders they saw in different eras and cities, and gradually a pattern builds up whereby Lew Archer deduces that the murder Helen saw, in Chicago in the late 1930s, must have something to do with the one that little Dolly saw, in the early 1950s on the California coast. Only a hunch prompts this belief: it's not as if he saw any clues or anything. Archer is determined to make the case that both previous murders, and the new one, form a trinity of relentless and mysterious evil, but I never understood why.

In the end, the "chill" of the title turns out to be a slang term for a successful cover-up, but it also stands in for the chill of obsession that clouds the killer's mind. Macdonald provides a bit of literary criticism along the way, neatly skewering the preference of 1960s college students for Salinger and Kerouac. In addition, a Verlaine translation becomes an important leitmotif in the storyline.

A well-woven plot that ties the present to the past. Not as good as "The Underground Man," another MacDonald book, but similar and still very well done. The writing style is hard-boiled, but literate. It comes to something of an abrubt end, but the lead-up juggles enough suspects, witnesses, and victims across a twenty year time-span to keep you entertained.