Customer Reviews

The Drowning Pool: A Lew Archer Novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A Ross MacDonald is like an extremely well crafted 1950's black & white noir movie. Nothing comes through in it's true color, everything is projected in shades of gray, the action is stately yet never drags, and the characters are all vaguely threatening.

All of MacDonald's novels exhibit certain basic themes--tormented families, buried secrets that fester through multiple generations, environmental destruction, and the brutal contrast between rich and poor. The key to MacDonald's long running success was Archers realism and authenticity, MacDonald's ability to craft complex yet understandable stories, his mastery of language, and his ability to generate a specific atmosphere of threatening suspense on a consistent basis.

All of the above referenced themes are present in The Drowning Pool, which I think is MacDonald's best novel, though The Underground Man is right up there as well.

MacDonald's novels aren't just mind candy-reading him is a literary experience. I believe that is why he was successful in a sort of restrained way. Escapists will not get into these books-they are too cerebral. If you want to your books affect you, MacDonald and Archer are your kind of guy's.

I hesitate to call this a classic because some people consider "classics" as dull and out-dated. And there's nothing dull or out-dated here (well, maybe that paying $10 to be driven from Las Vegas to L. A. is a bit out of date).

Archer's hired to discover who sent his client's husband a letter accusing her of infidelity. Introduced to the family and friends at a party as a Hollywood agent, he is sensitive to the growing tension and explosive atmosphere. The reader knows of course that somebody's going to be murdered, but these early chapters are among the most skillfully written to build suspense that I've ever read.

Written in 1950, the inclusion of a homosexual couple was quite daring although there is not graphic description, and isn't significant enough a factor of the plot to either offend or attract a reader.

Read this and I'm sure you'll find it on your own list of crime classics.

I'm not a big fan of detective series because they tend to become robotic in plot and characterization, but the Ross MacDonald/Lew Archer series is an exception. Crisp language, tight plots, and geat dialog make for a gripping story.

A sad sidenote. Don't rent/watch the insipid Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward movie 'loosely' based on the book. Instead of LA they set it in New Orleans and they basically rearranged all the characters into pale versions of their literary counterparts. Just thought I'd let you know.

In this skillfully written tale of murder and intrigue, Ross MacDonald manages to "out Chandler" Raymond Chandler. It's Southern California, circa 1950, and hardboiled detective Lew Archer finds himself traversing the same landscapes Chandler's Philip Marlowe does in The Big Sleep, High Window and The Long Goodbye.

The plot of The Drowning Pool is complex enough to be interesting without being convoluted or forced. Greed, blackmail, homosexuality and family dysfunction all play roles in advancing the nicely paced narrative. Thrown in for good measure are seductive women, a number of action scenes and a Lolita like teenager named Cathy.

MacDonald's very descriptive prose is quite effective. And there's plenty of memorable dialogue. My personal favorite: "Your reminiscences fascinate me. May I take notes?"

You'd be hard pressed to find a more satisfying example of noir crime writing. An enthusiastic 5 stars.

MacDonald was not only the heir to craftwork of Hammett and Chandler, he may well have brought this particular strain of crime fiction to its pinacle. This being my first MacDonald novel, I found his plot work to be intriguing yet completely coherent (sadly, I can't say that for Chandler), and his prose to be pitch - perfect. If RM had a shortcoming as a writer, it might be that his characters are a little underdeveloped. He manages to weave darker, transgressive noir themes into the story without being crude or providing shock of its own sake. I can't wait to get my hands on more of MacDonald's work!

Ross MacDonald is usually compared to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. However Lew Archer is never hard-bitten (despite hard-bitten experience) as Hammett and Chandler's detectives are. In Lew Archer, MacDonald creates a wholly sympathetic detective with loads of angst or emotions more akin to Dave Robicheaux (James Lee Burke's detective). That is, his life is not just something he's surviving -- he is experiencing it. There is violence, but the violence is secondary to the feelings and atmosphere of the story. It differs from an Agatha Christie mystery where you come to admire her ability to fit a plot puzzle together. With the Drowning Pool, there is more a feeling that this is a tragedy rather than a detective story. The Drowning Pool shows themes that run throughout MacDonald's mysteries -- multi-generational sins of the father being visited upon the children, sincs with long roots and branches, dysfunctional families. MacDonald's talent lies in infusing his stories with dark atmospheres that generally has not been translated well onto the silver screen. Paul Newman playing Lew Archer is much more light-hearted than the book. Melanie Griffith plays the seductive daughter in the movie. I remember the first time I saw the movie that I was surprised that Melanie's mother (whom I didn't know was Tippi Hedren at the time) would allow her 14 year old to project such sexuality. I don't think that Melanie was acting the part because she went on to live with Don Johnson shortly after the movie.

Ross Macdonald describes America the way it really is, mindblowing, desperate, full of paranoia!! His descriptions of faded starlets and worn-out harlots wandering around Hollywood, talking tough and acting mean, he describes the slums, the shady characters out to make a buck, the cops with trigger fingers and intolerant faces, it is all there. I have reccomended his books to friends in Europe, they don't seem to see it the same way I do. I bet it's still a damn good read for most people.

Of all the classic heroes in hard-boiled fiction (Spade, Marlowe, etc.) I've always found Lew Archer to be my favorite. Maybe it's because MacDonald does such a superlative job illustrating Archer's flaws, doubts and shortcomings. Rather than some iron-jawed superhero, he's a compellingly complex person whose battered conscience ultimately makes him more heroic. Many readers consider The Drowning Pool to be the best Archer book and it's hard to argue that contention. If pressed, I might rank The Way Some People Die just a little bit higher, but both books are so good it's stupid to quibble. I haven't read The Barbarous Coast yet, but look forward to diving in soon.. and afterward I might have to revise my opinion regarding Archer's best case once again.

There is no such thing as a bad Ross MacDonald novel, but while this is good, it isn't typical of his best work. MacDonald's Lew Archer novels are correctly judged to be the great successor works to the great stories and novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Together the three writers constitute the Great Triumvirate of the American hardboiled school. While MacDonald doesn't write prose quite as brilliant or memorable as his two predecessors, he created characters of greater depth and complexity. He also wrote a larger quantity of great novels than either Hammett or Chandler.

Despite all this, THE DROWNING POOL does not stand out very far from what Hammett and Chandler had achieved and it did not really put on display MacDonald's later innovations. If there is a theme running through MacDonald's best books like THE CHILL or THE INSTANT ENEMY or THE MOVING TARGET is it this: "The sins of the fathers will be visited unto the second and third generations." In almost all of his mature novels Lew Archer starts off investigating some incident in the present that ends up having roots 20 or 30 or 40 years earlier. His novels always puts me in mind of Yeats's "Leda and the Swan," where the rape of Leda by Zeus in the form of a swan inevitably leads to the tragedy of the Trojan war: "A shudder in the loins engenders there/The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/And Agamemnon dead." There is an intricate causality in the Archer novels. Things happen not because of anything happening right here and now, but in almost foreordained fashion because of actions in a previous generation. THE DROWNING POOL has a smidgen of this, but not much. The causality developed here is the later view of causality in embryonic form.

The amazing thing is that even though this is not quite as breathtaking as later MacDonald novels, it is still absolutely first rate. Ironically, this is one of his best-known novels, even if it isn't one of his very best. The reason is easy to identify: it was made into a movie starring Paul Newman. In fact, though MacDonald is clearly one of the Big Three hardboiled writers, unlike Hammett and Chandler -- both of whose novels have been turned into several great films -- MacDonald's books simply do not lend themselves to conversion to movies. Paul Newman did play Lew Archer as Harper in two movies, but they were not of the same quality as the best films based on Hammett and Chandler books. HARPER was a film version of THE MOVING TARGET, so both the title and the main character underwent a name change. Unbelievably, MacDonald's best book -- and one of the two or three greatest hardboiled novels ever written -- THE CHILL has never been made into a movie. The film that is closest to the world of Lew Archer has no connection to any novel by MacDonald, Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN, which is much closer to MacDonald in spirit than to either Hammett or Chandler.

Still, this is must read MacDonald. His books would get better, but that isn't to say that this isn't a good, even a great, novel.

In his second Archer tale, Macdonald attempts to explore family psychology, but the result for me was disappointing. The characters remained pretty surface, with the ending not being all that plausible. The treatment of the homosexual characters is fairly risible by today's standards, though Macdonald in this respect, as in others, was merely following the example of the Master, Chandler. There is some good writing, however. Still, overall I'm surprised this one often is singled out as his best.