At one of the book fairs last year, I bought a number of Ross MacDonald books because, although I have read many of them twice, I don’t have many of them on my shelves.
As one might expect if one has read Geherin, MacDonald represents a transitional author in the hard-boiled detective school. He still has his hard knock chops in Lew Archer and the Chandleresque plots, but they have a touch more touchy-feely exploration of intrafamily conflict. This book is no exception as it begins with a disturbed young man kidnapping a wealthy oilman with the help of one of his underling’s innocent daughters and then delves into several decades-old murders amid a family tree that intertwines like a oak and poison sumac. I don’t even know if those two things intertwine frequently, but the book compells one to try his hand at simile.
This book and others that I’m revisiting on occasion remind me of why I wanted to be a writer, or at least what made me think I could get away with it. Somewhere, though, my voice varied from these pieces, but it’s good to come home once in a while.
