Customer Reviews

The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

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In 1949, Ross Macdonald's private detective Lew Archer made his first appearance in the author's fifth novel, "The Moving Target," which would ultimately be the first of 18 Archer novels. These novels comprise what William Goldman called, "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American." Not only do the Archer novels tower over those of more recent writers of detective fiction (Robert Parker, Bill Pronzini, Sue Grafton, Michel Collins, etc) but they even eclipse the works of the two famous founding fathers of the genre.

Mathew Bruccoli called Macdonald "the third member of The Big Three authors of the American hard-boiled detective novel," the other two being Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Anthony Boucher went even further by calling Macdonald "the best of the three." Hammett originated the tough, unsentimental private detective with the nameless Continental Op and Sam Spade. The Op is the earliest of the hard-boiled dicks and appeared in 36 stories (eight of which were refashioned into two novels.) Perhaps because he is descibed as being overweight and middle-aged, the Op never achieved the popularity of other fictional detectives, though he remains the archetype of this new breed of amoral and sometimes brutal "hero." Since Spade appeared in only one novel (the highly influential "The Maltese Falcon") and three stories, his literary career is limited. Chandler refined the character with his Philip Marlowe who became the epitome of the independent, seemingly insensitive detective driven to solve his cases due to his personal code of honor which is more important to him than official law. Marlowe appears in seven novels and several stories, most memorably in Chandler's masterpiece, "The Long Goodbye." In this novel, the detective achieves a depth of characterization that elevates him to the status of a closeted romantic victimized by a corrupt society. With all due respect to Hammett and Chandler, however, it was Macdonald who converted the detective into a tragic hero while his novels greatly expanded the genre's capacity for social condemnaton and cultural censure.

Ross Macdonald began his career by copying the styles of both Hammett and Chandler. As a result, his early novels are interesting but do not approach the level of those of his mentors. Like most detective fiction, they are driven primarily by the solution of the mystery. However, with the seventh Archer novel, "The Doomsters," Macdonald began his break from Hammett and Chandler to explore new themes and expand his protagonist's characterization. "The Galton Case" followed and perfected this innovative type of detective novel and thereby set a new literary standard for the genre. Although Archer may have beegun his career as a cynical, wise-cracking private eye in the Spade-Marlowe tradition, he was gradually transformed into a compassionate hero who is more interested into understanding the people he investigates and perhaps even helping them, though this is often a futile gesture. These novels and subsequent ones use characterizations and psychological dilemmas to propel the storylines which emerge as examinations of the human condition. Hammett and Chandler are replaced by Sophocles and Freud as inspirations for the plots and resolutions. Through progressively more poetic prose, Macdonald places Archer into complicated plots involving generational conflicts, missing children, childhood traumas, ecological disasters and, especially, the ability of buried secrets to crawl out of their tombs and destroy the innocent. And increasingly, Archer's cases impact upon his own personal problems and affect his life in profound ways. Among the best of the later Archer novels are "The Chill," "Black Money," "The Undergound Man" and "The Blue Hammer" but all are exceptional. When he died in 1983, it was a tragic loss to the literary world and particularly to his fans, especially it has since been reported that he was planning the last Archer novel, a book which would involve his hero's own quest for personal identity with the crime he was investigating. When Macdonald died, Archer also died, his personal dilemmas never resolved, leaving him in literary limbo.

However, with the publication of "The Archer Files," some of the blanks in Archer's life can be filled in. For the first time, all of Macdonald's 12 stories, written from 1946 to 1965, are published together in one volume. (Two previous volumes were incomplete.) It is irrevant that, when originally published, the early stories featured detectives with other names; just as the author was expanding his skill, his detective was slowly evolving into Lew Archer. These early stories do not necessarily represent Macdonald at his best. At the early stage of his career, he was perhaps forced by tradition (and a need for a sale to a mystery magazine) to refrain from stretching the genre. But even these predictable tales are rewarding since they show the gradual development of Macdonald's expertise. Also fascinating is the inclusion of the beginnings of several stories which were temporarily discarded until characterizations and plots could be completely developed. Even more entertaining is a 24-page "biography" of Lew Archer himself, complied by editor Tom Nolan from interior data throughout the series, that brings Archer to life, as if he really existed. Of course, anyone who has read Nolan's 1999 biography of Macdonald knows that Archer to some degree was Macdonald, without the mysteries, without the murders - but perhaps with the same lifelong pursuit of personal identity, the enduring desire to make up for past mistakes, the endless quest to find justice and love in an unjust and emotionally barren world.

Ross MacDonald may well have been the best private eye writer ever, certainly he is my favourite.

In this book, we get to see a biography of Lew Archer, followed by the complete short stories featuring Archer and then the case notes of unfinished books (mainly the first few pages of Chapter 1) that MacDonald had written.

I must admit that I am not a huge fan of short stories as I find that they are too restrictive on an author and I did tire of the stories as I went through the book but nevertheless, the stories are worth a read.

Recommended.

This is a fantastic gift for anyone you know who appreciates superb crime fiction. Many of us have known for years how good the Lew Archer novels were, but this collection of short stories and 'case notes' really drives home that fact.

What I liked: a) MacDonald's economic writing style-this man can convey more in a sentence or a toss-aside conversation than some authors can do in a paragraph; b) The descriptive portrayal of post WW II Los Angeles; c) The maturing of Archer as he ages across the two decades encompassed in these stories; d) The wonderful biographical introduction to Lew Archer by the author.

What I didn't like: a) There were only eighteen stories. I could have read a hundred; b) The case notes are painful because they are the nuggets of what has the making to be the nineteenth great short story and then they just end, unfinished.

So we'll just have to live with 18 gems and a dozen or so rough cut fragments.

BTW, if you like this author, his wife Margaret Millar is just as good and any of her books are highly recommenced. She is less well known now, but both were feted highly by the Mystery Writers of America, winning both of them Edgars as well as lifetime achievement awards.

All the Crippen and Landur books are great, but this time we have not only all the short stories, but also a small biography of Archer and ideas of possible stories. The collection is GREAT. (Its a sheme that no one developed the short stories in to a new collection).
If you like PI collections, buy this one.

Lew Archer is as tough as the Continental Op, but witout his essential cruelty. He is as clever as Philip Marlowe, without his cynicism. Archer keeps hoping that people will be better than they are, but when they turn out not to be he socks them in the jaw and puts them away. He has a continually surprising breadth of self-education.

If you like Hammett, Chandler, you will like Ross MacDonald. If you like a little depth in your hardbitten heroes, you will love this book.