“The Archer novels are about various kinds of brokenness. I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.”


Returning to this book after many years, the reader can clearly see Macdonald has become a novelist simply using the genre as a means to an end. He wrote about broken people in need of mending, and perhaps mercy. But as he once wrote:

“I have a secret passion for mercy…but justice is what keeps happening to people.”

That is certainly true of The Goodbye Look, a novel released a year before the tragic death of his daughter, whose troubled life is well documented. Young people were often troubled or in trouble in a Lew Archer novel, and that’s the case here. But it is the more mature adults who before all is said and done, appear to have lived their entire lives in interconnected lies and half-truths, with a kidnapping, and at least three murders connecting several families.

If it sounds complicated for a detective novel, it is. About a third of the way through, Macdonald has Archer sit down and write some case notes to help him get a bead on how what he knows ties together. It doesn’t help Archer, and it doesn’t help the reader. And then it becomes even more a labyrinth of old crimes somehow connected to a tiny Florentine box which has been stolen. The theft is simply a trigger, but unfortunately the trigger brings about more death, as Archer weaves his way through pain and regret to get at the truth. Archer has compassion for Betty, and the very damaged young man she loves, Nick, but in order to get to the bottom of the trouble, he’ll have to look at a crime which took place in 1945. What happened then may be the key to everything.

The case begins when lawyer John Truttwell hires Archer, in behalf of the Chalmers, to find a Florentine box which has been stolen. Archer learns that Truttwell is hiring him in behalf of Irene Chalmers only, but the reasons are as yet unclear. So is the reason why the letters inside the box are so important. Later in the case, Archer will get hold of them, and discover the reason. Perhaps this passage as Archer meets the very lovely Irene Chalmers for the first time, says it best:

“Her tone was both assertive and lacking in self-assurance. It was the tone of a handsome woman who had married money and social standing and never could forget that she might just as easily lose these things.”

But if the reader believes he understands things up to this early point in the mystery, they’d be wrong, because nothing is quite as it seems; not Larry and Irene Chalmers’ emotionally troubled and mentally unstable son, Nick; not an old kidnapping; not the murder of an old man decades before; not a missing fortune; not a doctor and his wife, with whom Archer will have an affair; not even the history of the people involved in the case, because it’s all a lie more complicated and far reaching than the reader, or Archer, can get a handle on. Some might wonder why Archer is even bothering, because few of these people are truly likable.

But then Archer meets John Truttwell’s young daughter, who loves the deeply troubled Nick. Already hurting because she’s been thrown over for an older woman, she might be the only innocent person here, and Archer likes her. Though Archer has compassion, and desires, as is proven by his affair with Moira, the wife of the doctor treating Nick, it is obvious that once Archer meets young Betty, his involvement in the case is assured. More murders, more secrets, and a bullet in the shoulder await Archer, and the story hasn’t yet come near to reaching a conclusion. The last third of the book makes the frustration of not understanding what’s going on any more than Archer does worth the literary ride.

This is a terrific novel, but Macdonald isn’t for every taste. He had his own literate approach to the form, using it as a platform to write about broken people, shattered dreams, and familial betrayal. Archer is at the center, yet Macdonald writes him almost as an observer, trying to help without letting the ugliness change him. Archer often feels a quiet, unspoken compassion for someone in the case, trying to facilitate some kind of emotional peace for them. The catalyst for Archer's interest is often a young person, as is the case here. It was a mirror to Kenneth Millar himself. A fixture in Santa Barbara in the ’70s, singer Warren Zevon made no distinctions between the fictional Archer and the flesh and blood Macdonald. He credited Macdonald for saving his life when he had a physical and emotional breakdown, and dedicated an album to him. To quote Zevon about his neighbor:

“At the lowest point in my life, the doorbell rang. And there, quite literally, was Lew Archer, on a compassionate mission, come to save my life.”

This certainly coincides with something Macdonald himself wrote about the craft:

“We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.”

Yes, the clues to the man are all here, left by the writer of the stories. Macdonald was very much the detective in his stories, if we are to believe Zevon and others.

Macdonald’s early work when he was closer in style to Chandler is very entertaining, but it’s his later work that is his best, once he’d moved away from Chandler and Hammett. Macdonald's approach isn’t better than their approach, it is simply different. A marvelous, literate read in a genre too often substituting gore and violence and unpleasantness, for understanding and story. Macdonald isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who like the human equation in their detective fiction, he’s unbeatable. This one, The Chill, The Drowning Pool, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty are some of the best in the genre.

On a technical note, I read this on Kindle downloaded from Amazon Australia this time, and I was truly disappointed in Penguin. At the back, there is a whole section about the quality of the modern classics series of which Macdonald’s books are a part. Any yet, the text was unjustified, leaving a ragged, annoying right-hand margin. Shame on Penguin… ( )

Another in the superb series of detective stories by Ross Macdonald, and another in his endless yet endlessly entertaining and inventive looks at the dark secrets that tear families apart. Macdonald's P.I. Lew Archer in this one investigates the case of a troubled young man who may be linked to a murder which occurred when he was a little boy. Macdonald has a pragmatic yet quietly melancholic view of family, and in a sense most of his novels examine the same question: can the sins of the father ever be erased? Not that it's always the father at fault. Archer seems less sentimental than Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, who isn't very overtly sentimental himself. In this novel, we get a slight hint more than usual of Archer's background and a good feel for his place on the graph of morality. Although the plethora of characters and their intertwining relationships, familial and otherwise, can be a bit confusing, this is still one of Macdonald's most vigorous and enjoyable books. ( )

Lew Archer sabe que los secretos del pasado son los que provocan los misterios del presente. El tiempo tan sólo los hiberna, hasta que estallan ante la atónica mirada de sus protagonistas. Así que, cuando los Chalmers, ricos y poderosos, le reclaman, preocupados por el comportamiento de su hijo, a él le basta con escarbar un poco en sus vidas para saber que sólo encontrará la respuesta si rastrean minuciosamente sus propias conciencias.

review of
Ross MacDonald's The Goodbye Look
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 16, 2021

Memory is important. How many people have significant memories anymore? People w/o them are more easily manipulated than those w/ them. If you remember that a 'news'caster or a politician sd something contrary to what they're saying now a mere 6 mnths ago then that's a hint that they might just be adapting their spiel rather than saying something heartfelt.

In order to fully appreciate any mystery novel it helps to have a memory. The details accumulate & form a potential whole. I'm particularly conscious of this w/ Ross MacDonald. There are so many characters, so many motives, so many apparent innocences that may only be apparent. If the reader doesn't even remember who the uncovered guilty party is by the end of the bk it doesn't have much impact, much closure, much resolution. For whatever reason, I was hyperconscious of this reading The Goodbye Look - maybe there're more characters than usual.

One thing I might be more sensitive to than many or most readers are class issues - even if they're just 'background'. Take this:

"I smiled, and she decided to respond. She tapped me on the cheek with her red rose, then dropped it on the tile floor as if it had served its purpose. "Come into the study. We can talk privately there."

"She led me up a short flight of steps to a richly carved oak door. Before she closed it behind us I could see the servant in the reception hall picking up after her, first the clippers, then the rose." - p 6

To other people, such a detail is only description, no more. I read it as evoking a whole world of privilege & irresponsibility. People who take it for granted that other people will clean after them are sickening to me. It's as if they think they're 'too important' for such 'lowly' tasks but that other people aren't. I dislike them. As such, I become biased against the character.

"A middle-aged man in a fine tweed suit got out of a black Rolls Royce in front of the house. He crossed the courtyard with a kind of military precision, as if every step he took, each movement of his arms, was separately controlled by orders sent down from on high. The eyes in his lean brown face had a kind of bright blue innocence. The lower part of his face was conventionalized by a square-cut, clipped brown mustache." - pp 10-11

Not exactly evocative of someone I'm likely to share a good joke w/, not to mention an enlightened political discussion.

"["]But Mr. Chalmers is pretty hard on Nick; they're such different types, you know. Mick is very critical of the war, for example, and Mr. Chalmers considers that unpatriotic.["]" - p 14

The date? 1969. The war? Vietnam. The level of animosity between generations about Vietnam was astounding. Do parents & their children argue heatedly about the US occupying Afghanistan? I reckon not like they did then.

""I'm going to find my Daddy," she said. "I'll find him dead or alive. If he's alive I'll cook and keep house for him. And I'll be happier than I ever was in my born days. If he's dead I'll find his grave and do you know what I'll do then? I'll crawl in with him and go to sleep."" - p 57

One might expect nightmares in such an eventuality. I've never really understood this obsession w/ one's parents. They're not always such wonderful people, some of them are definitely worth getting away from ASAP.

"Trutwell answered my half-finished question: "I remember that something did happen involving Nick when he was in second or third grade. One day he didn't come home from school. His mother phoned me and asked me what to do. I gave her some standard advice. Whether or not she followed it I still don't know. But the boy was home the following day. And Smitheram's been treating him off and on ever since. Not too successfully I might add."

""Did Mrs. Chalmers give you any idea of what happened?"

""Nick either ran away or was abducted. I think the latter. And I think—" Truttwell wrinkled his nose as if at a bad smell—"sex was involved."

""So you said yesterday. What kind of sex?"

""Abnormal," he said shortly." - p 71

Reading between the lines, it's possible that the "standard advice" was for her to boil some cane toads & drink the juice. Now, I can't say for certain that that's what's implied but, what the heck?!, let's go there: one can imagine a bucketload of trouble happening in short order. Cook. That's why I'm a firm believer in Platonic Love.. or is it Socratic Lump?

""Don't fatherize, please, Mr. Archer."

""Why not? I don't believe people know everything at birth and forget it as they grow older."

"She reacted to my sharp tone. "That's the doctrine of Platonic reminiscence. I don't believe it, either."" - p 128

Odds are, you've never heard of "the doctrine of Platonic reminiscence" - even if you do foolishly love your father. Plato, Schmato, I always say. Other people say Playdough, Tomato - to each their own.

"For just about the first time in my life I knew how it must feel to get old." - p 151

I know, I know.

I've commented in other reviews of MacDonald novels the way the author uses Archer as an art critic, apparently sniping at Modern Art. As we all know, Modern Art is capable of fighting back.

"The room was windowless but hung with abstract paintings, like inward windows replacing the outward ones." - p 154

Rudolph Schwarzhola's famous vomit paintings, e.g..

""Will you bring me the results? I'll probably still be in your father's office. You can wear a disguise or something."

"She refused to smile. But she trotted dutifully away on the errand. I could feel new adrenaline in my own veins, making me feel stronger and more aggressive. If my hunch was good, the froth of vomit in the envelope could break the case." - p 156

Oedipal vomit. & here's the proof:

"["]Unfortunately,the reel I'm about to show you is nearly twenty-six years old and in rather poor condition. It broke as I was running it through just now."" - p 159

I react as a projectionist: Be more CAREFUL!

I recommend this. It's twisted - & if you can make it all the way thru remembering everybody & their relations to each other then you can either pat yourself on the back or get someone else to do it. ( )

Ross MacDonald seems to understand teenagers as well as he understands his own generation. His characters always ring true regardless of their demographic. This novel has a fascinatingly intricate plot, a fast pace, rich detail and sympathy for all the characters. Even though this is one of his last novels, it's among his best. ( )