The Lew Archer series by Ross MacDonald have been described by The New York Times " the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American". This is as per the back cover of my edition , this is accurate and would probably apply to any country not just the U S A.
Archer is the ultra cynical private eye who keeps on believing that human nature can't be as bad as he sees it and continually gets disappointed.
"The Doomsters " starts with Archer being woken by an escapee from a mental hospital who claims to have been committed so as to deprive him of his inheritance.
Our 'knight' Archer becomes involved trying to solve several historic deaths and a few recent ones connected with this one family.
Along the way he encounters several layers of evil involving everyone in the story. MacDonald writes so well about the weakness's of humans, his writing is much more than hard boiled detective fiction.
There is some Archer back story in this story that I haven't encountered in the other novels in the series that I have read.
This story is not as good as "The Chill" but then again nothing is, but it's a good murder mystery and a fine way to spend a Sunday on the couch. (Published 1958)
No comments:
Post a Comment