Customer Reviews

Lawrence Sanders' McNally's Bluff

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

 

 

Vincent Lardo continues to write "in the style of" Lawrence Sanders who create the Archy McNally series. Archy McNally is a Palm Beach private investigator who works out of his wealthy father's law offices.

Archy and the Palm Beach A list are invited to the opening of La Maze. Newcomers to the Palm Beach scene, Matthew Hayes, former carnival cannon ball, and his wife Marlena Marvel, are throwing a party to get in with the "right crowd." Hayes has recreated an English maze at his mansion and the party goers pair off to find their way to the center. But the contest begins only after Marlena recreates her famous impression of Venus DeMilo. But alas, most of the contestants grew increasingly frustrated and not only couldn't find the maze center, they couldn't get out.

Following the maze game, fabulous buffet tables awaited the guests. But the hostess couldn't be found. And then the search was on again -- and didn't end until she was found dead, at the center of the maze.

How could she get there past all the contestants? Who killed her? When? Why? Matthew hired Archy on the spot to find answers. But as he digs in, there are only more questions. Then the most promising suspects, those with the best apparent motives, begin to die, and good leads turn to dead ends.

The characters are believable and include those you'll love to love -- and those you'll love to hate. One caution, if you really care, be prepared to take notes and create diagrams to try to keep up with who is sleeping with who -- and who slept with who, but isn't any more.

Armchair Interviews says: Readers who like fast-paced easy reads will enjoy McNally's Bluff. There are plenty of clues, but many of the suspicions the reader will share with Archy will turn out to be unfounded and red herrings.

After a hiatus of many years, I dipped back into the world of Palm Beach investigator Archy McNally, via "McNally's Bluff", and enjoyed the experience. Now written by Vincent Lardo, this series still feels close enough to the original Lawrence Sanders offerings that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Mr. Lardo was assisting Mr. Sanders from the beginning. In any event, it's all here: the cynical but funny observations about Palm Beach's eccentric denizens, the goofy internal politics at the McNally firm, the on-again/off-again romance (mostly "off" this time) between Archy and Connie, etc., etc. The mystery story is pretty good this time out, too, involving displaced "carny folk" and a big hedge maze. So, in the end, while I'm not usually a fan of the idea of keeping a mystery series going after the original author has departed this mortal coil, why complain in this case? The Archy McNally stories employ a playful, enjoyable, easily produced formula that the right writer or writers can keep delivering as long as people want to see it. And, besides, this one ends with a funny but still kind of serious cliffhanger involving Connie, so there's another reason to pick up the next one!

I don't enjoy bashing any author, because I know how much work is involved in writing a novel.
That said, I was a big, big fan of Lawrence Sanders' Archy McNally series. Sadly, Mr. Lardo misses the mark in his continuation series.
How? In many, many ways.
While an originating author is free to make up his own rules as he goes along. In my opinion, a continuation author is morally bound to keep the basics the same.
He cannot take a policeman/friend, (Al Rogoff) and turn him from a well-spoken policeman into a cop who sprinkles his sentences with "ain't" and totally butchers the English language.
He should know that the Pelican's Simon Pettigrew always would address Archy as "Mr. McNally," and never as "Archy." (If you're going to carry on a man's work, do some research if you haven't cared enough previously to read the first author's books.)
Connie was good enough for Lawrence Sanders, but apparently not for Mr. Lardo.
Maybe I'm nitpicking but Mr. Lardo's A.M. just isn't as interesting as Mr. Sander's A.M. His dialogue isn't as clever. Continuation series books are, in the final analysis, clones of the original books. Mr. Lardo falls short, far short, in this area. None of the characters ring true.
His plots actually are fairly good, but not good enough to make up for his shortcomings. It's only because of my high regard for the Archy McNally series that I read Mr. Lardo's books. Since it's been around six years since the last A.M. books, I'm guessing that others feel as I do. RIP, Archy McNally.

Archie McNally is a lovable and charming rogue and these books are so much fun! Archie, the son noted in the eponymous Palm Beach McNally & Son Law Firm, is not actually an attorney since he got the boot from law school for his numerous shenanigans there. Now an aging thirty something playboy, Archie sort of serves as a good-natured investigator for his father's law firm. McNally is a dilenttante who enjoys chasing women, epicurean dining, his friends, his club, excellent vocabularly, creatively doctoring his expense reports, and occasionally actually investigating things. Archie hobnobs with the rich and famous along the Gold Coast, investigates their foibles, misdeeds, and sometimes even their murders, all in a sort of happy complacence with his good fortune in life that is only sometimes slightly fractured by the raucous catastrophes he occasionally, yet unwittingly, creates about himself.

This series of books is a load of fun and I've been a faithful reader for years. Archie is one of the truly distinct and pleasurable characters in modern fiction and it is always a joy to slip into Archie time. Mr. Sanders started this series and since his death Vince Lardo, who helped on the original novels, has continued them without any noticeable flickers of discontinuity. So help yourself to a dose of Archie McNally and let him make all things right with your world, for a few hours at least.

Vincent Lardo comes close to Lawrence Sanders, but not as good. The thing that i loved about Sanders was his ability to weave a great story and Archy's life together. Lardo doesn't do it quite like Sanders.

All in all a good read, but i'm still mad at Lardo for making Connie and Archy split.

For all the Archy McNally fans this a great one. Vincent Lardo does an excellent job writing this novel. I only wish there would have been more published by Wheeler Publishing Co. Thanks Vince for keeping Archy alive for a little longer.

Long time ago I read one of Lawrence Sanders' s detective novels, found it too violent for me and decided never to read this author. Then I accidently bought one of his McNally series and absolutely fall in love with his adorable and mischievous hero and his delightfully elegant style. I bought every single book of these series and loved every one of them! I wish Mr. Sanders were still with us in this "best of all worlds" to continue writing mystery novels about Archie McNally. I would never miss any one of them.

I like all the McNally books and this one was good too.

An angry face of a gorgeous tiger was featured on the book jacket design on the hardcover of McNally's BLUFF (# 13 in this series). At first the symbolism in that design had me puzzled, as I attempted to connect it to the plot. I had wondered why a maze hadn't been used as the graphic symbol... until I contrasted the appealingly brassy red-and-gold colors, and tiger in the bulls-eye on BLUFF's jacket, to the ritzy but somber black-and-gold book jacket of the hardback of McNally's SECRET (the pilot to the series). That cover design comparison gave me a double-bulls-eye "ah ha!" into the slightly different focus of Sanders and Lardo in their offerings in this series.

With McNally's BLUFF, which appears to be the final book in the series, the McNally family's carnival history "secret" is coming full circle...

I didn't want to see that circus circle closing, or stepping fully out of the closet in all its gore and glory. If I saw that too clearly, I might have to accept an underlying significance that # 13 is truly the end of this series. No!

If that is so, however, McNally's BLUFF accomplished that honor of closing this series with amazing grace and literary panache!

In view of this speculation, I needed to read BLUFF on one of my slowest savor speeds. As I did so, I gradually came to love the perfection of the jacket on the hardcover. Actually, the paperback design is appealingly interesting, too, given the above perspective.

When I was more than half-way through the book, I noticed that the most current paperback design was very different; it applied an ebony background with a maze hedge stylized with a target in its center. Possibly due to the brain's need to "connect dots" that center symbol flashed my focus to the target used for Susan Silverman's practice with a fire arm in CRIMSON ROSE, # 15 in Robert B. Parker's Spenser series, which I reviewed recently. For some reason I continue seeing links between Spenser's world and Archy's, and what a stretch that is! I wrote about that brain spark in my review of McNally's SECRET.

Though this may be my last McNally novel to review, I can offset that loss by looking forward to the several Spenser novels I haven't yet read. That thought takes me to my novels; my first thought (actually it felt like a craving) after having finished writing each of them was, "I wish I could read this novel fresh, without having written it."

Thus, it is with added thanks that I have more Spenser novels to experience from that fresh first time of reading. And, that pleasant awareness brings to focus for me the contrast of the author paths involved in the creation and endurance of Spenser and Archy McNally. I believe both situations have brought "amazing" (a prominent word in BLUFF) cultural insights to the history of literature and the mysteries of life.

Which reminds me that while reading BLUFF I was able to conceptualize another of the core differences I've been sensing (on an edge of unconsciousness) between Sanders and Lardo. Lawrence Sander seemed to naturally view life through a philosophical perspective; Vincent Lardo seems to look at human machinations through a sociological lens. Each seasoned author etched those leanings, consciously or not, into their thematic content, plot structure, and designs of Archy's motivations, curiosities, and basic drives through life. Sanders was automatically focused on the meaning of life itself, and how to get the most out of the experience as an individual. Lardo seems to automatically center on the interconnections among human beings, especially as they're separated socially or politically into clusters, cliques, or classes.

I don't know if these two authors fully realized how they were driven by this type of targeted viewpoint, when they were in process with a plot. Probably few of us do. Yet, I believe we're each driven by unique needs to know, by unique curiosities, which we each possess at core, at the center, the target of our essence-of-being, and of moving forward.

In SECRET, Sanders had Archy state that we're all hedonists at heart, though few of us admit it. In essence, through his McNally series, Sanders uses Archy to dramatize that unique, individual desire to know what gives personal pleasure, what gives a sense of satisfaction, why it does so, and how to enhance that need to "suck the marrow out of life."

In BLUFF, Lardo's Archy seems to imply that we (as human beings) tend to compare ourselves to others at higher levels in social class structure, and that we need to belong, to be accepted within the cream of social strata. Yet, at the same time we've been liberally taught to revile luxury, opulence, privilege and class.

These contrasts bring to mind the thematic essence of Ayn Rand's novels, FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED. Are we naturally oriented, as a species, to self or to others; and which is the prime/ethical way of being.

In myself, I have felt the natural needs of both Archies. I am very much an individual, and have released some of the culturally induced taint of feeling evil in having chosen to allow myself to center in a personal focus. Yet, I also crave to connect with and relate to others, fairly, sometimes intimately in friendship (to mutual benefit), and rightly. I'm wondering if this might be why, along with many others, I've been so fascinated with this series, especially given the comparisons and contrasts of the dual authorship.

In an overall balance I'm more of a philosopher/psychologist, than a sociologist, and I know that's one of the reasons I enjoy the Spenser series. To me, Parker seems more like Sanders than Lardo, in his art, yet, like Lardo, Parker works with (and entertains through) sociological issues, too.

Seeing this perspective contrast between the Sanders and Lardo Archies, the fact begins to clarify for me, of the two personas' varied needs to control (or not) others and their environments. If a person's focus is based comfortably in oneself, there's less or no need to control others. Whereas, if one is based in needs for social interaction, and for acceptance and approval from outside oneself, the need to control becomes natural, sometimes vital for emotional (and physical) survival. Though Ayn Rand does so, I do not want to conclude yet that one or the other type of personality structure is ethically right or wrong, morally good or evil. Maybe the correct fact is that we're each naturally different in these types of slants, and in different phases of maturity. I will admit, though, that the less I feel a need to control, the better I like life and myself.

I love a good story, a good mystery, from almost any angle of approach.

In conclusion, I'm compelled to mention an ethereal quality I felt, and quite enjoyed, in parts of this # 6 novel in Vincent Lardo's Archy collection (# 13 in the whole). In certain luxuriously drawn scenes, I could almost sense light pouring holes through the pages, similarly to images which have been portrayed in movies like the Harry Potter series, and The Never Ending Story. In BLUFF, Lardo had honed his author skills so well, he seemed to be literally producing magic in how certain scenes lifted off the pages and danced before, around, and within me. One scene in particular, which was infused with this type of "living light," was of the short yacht excursion to which Archy and Georgy were invited by Carolyn Taylor, and which included her boy toy, Billy, and Connie and Alex.

What amazing gifts we have available in all of the above. Maybe that's the "bluff":

That it's all real and it's all a bluff. Long live the spiritual sanctuary of the novel. It almost, sometimes, seems to qualify as a church.

Linda Shelnutt