In the fourth Lew Archer novel, the world-weary private detective is hired by a very dubious (but conspicuously rich) female client to follow a young nurse and report on her whereabouts. The trail leads to Bella City, a seaside town in precipitous decline, where Archer encounters the usual cast of unctuous hotel clerks, unlicensed snoopers with a fuzzy sense of ethics, and poverty-stricken citizens just doing their best to survive. He soon learns that the real reason he's been hired to tail the nurse has something to do with the disappearance of a wealthy man from a neighboring town.

All of the Archer books are readable and most are great, but The Ivory Grin ranks in the lower tier of Ross Macdonald's work. It's here that he really begins to hit his stride in terms of complex plotting, but this novel also finds Macdonald breathing some of his most unpleasant prejudices into the Archer character. Attractive people are virtuous while unattractive ones harbor all the nastiest characteristics of the human race, lashing out at the world and everyone in it because they're incapable of being fully-fledged people themselves. It's about as sophisticated as phrenology, and Macdonald should have been embarrassed. And evidently he was, because he rarely engaged in this kind of stereotyping again. (It showed up once more in the sixth Archer novel, The Barbarous Coast, but then Macdonald washed his hands of it. He was intelligent enough to recognize it as a problem.)

The plot is fast-moving and consistent and entertaining, but The Ivory Grin leaves a bad aftertaste. Three and a quarter stars. ( )

The fourth book in the Lew Archer series of detective thrillers may not be the best in the series, but it's still pretty good. There were plenty of moments partway through my reading when I thought regretfully that the plot was just too sordid and trashy; but although not every character's arc was resolved, and others' actions are less than believable--what experienced criminal visits an office building to commit a murder there in broad daylight?--the plot is wrapped up in a grimly stylish way, and as always seems to be the case with MacDonald, the incidental and supporting characters are as vivid as anyone you'd remember from a movie. And sometimes a good B picture is just want you want to see. ( )

This one was all about California dives and low lifes... ( )

When I began reading Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels last year, I built my acquisitions around the three-volume collection published by the Library of America. These bring together many of the Archer novels that Macdonald published over the span of a quarter century, encapsulating nicely the corpus of his work. The collection is far from comprehensive, though, which led me to search out copies of the novels missing from them.

The Ivory Grin was my latest find. It begins when Archer is approached by a woman asking her to locate a nurse hiding in a small California town. This soon results in a series of encounters that hit the marks familiar to readers of Macdonald's novels, with murders, clashes with local law enforcement, and encounters with a cast of sharply-written characters. Yet while an enjoyable read there is a reason why it didn't make the "best of" collection published by the LoA, as the elements of the story don't come together as well as they do his other novels. It just goes to prove that, no matter how good they are or how effective their formula is, not even the best writer can produce a great work every time. ( )

Well, after all the sweetness and light of Heidi, I figured I needed to return to the dark side, so to speak. So, more noir detective fiction for me.

So, a mysterious, rich woman, just "Una" (later we learn it's Durano, or sometimes, Larkin) comes to Archer to ask him to find her maid, Lucy Champion. She says Ms. Champion (who could pass for white if she so chose) stole something from her. During the looking around, Archer comes across another P.I., Max Heiss (aka Julian Desmond) who is also looking for Ms. Champion. Well, naturally, there's lots of other stuff, such as a sketchy doctor, Sam Benning and his spouse, Bess, and a rich lady, Mrs. Charles Singleton who wants to find her missing son, for which there is a huge reward. Bess, the sketchy doctor's wife, has a major off and on thing with the kid. She is also a good friend of Ms. Champion. Well, people get killed and disappear and so forth, and eventually Archer figures it all out.

It's actually quite a good read, unlike this review, which is a garbled mess. I should write up reviews within a few days of reading, rather than a month later. Sorry 'bout that. Anyway, this book proves, yet again, that Ross Macdonald is a worthy successor to the noir master, Raymond Chandler. Clearly one of the best things I've done in the past six or so months is to get a library card for the library in the next town over, which gave me access to Macdonald. So, let's hear it for Woburn! Much less of a dump than we ever imagined.
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