review of
Ross MacDonald's The Ferguson Affair
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 17, 2021

If there are any regular readers of my reviews out there you will've no doubt noticed that I've invented (or think I may've invented) a new genre that I call Springboard Reviews: i.e.: I use reviewing as a springboard for whatever flights of fancy or scholariness or self-reference the part of the bks under my scrutiny I may choose to quote inspires. I try to avoid spoiling the plot but I also usually try to give a taste of some of the flavor of the bk. Given that I almost exclusively read (&, therefore, review) bks that I like, it's fun to be inspired by them. Some reviews go much further afield than others. Those are usually the biggest pleasure to write. When I start writing a review I'm not usually that sure of where I'm going to go w/ it. That's certainly the case today.

I get the impression that many repeat readers of MacDonald prefer his Lew Archer stories over the much fewer non-Lew-Archer stories. So far, I've liked them all. One of them had a probation officer as the detecting character, this one has a public defender. I find those variations interesting.

""Innocence or guilt has nothing to do with it, Miss Barker. The judges keep an alphabetical list of all the attorneys in town. We take turns representing defendants without funds. My name happened to be next on the list."

""What did you say your name was?"

""Gunnarson. William Gunnarson."

""It's a funny name," she said, wrinkling her nose." - p 1

Unsurprisingly, dramatic tension is provided by having the defendent be in deep shit & simultaneously not cooperating w/ the lawyer appointed to defend her. Equally unsurprisingly, sd lawyer decides to go to great lengths to champion her anyway. How often does this latter happen in 'real life'? One wonders. Probably not enuf.

"I sat and glared at the back of her sleek dark head. I couldn't guess what secrets lay coiled inside of it, but I was morally certain that they weren't criminal secrets. Ella lacked the earmarks of the type: the dull-eyed resignation, the wild flares of rebelliousness, the indescribable feral odor of sex that has grown claws." - p 4

I find that description.. interesting.. & somewhat self-contradictory: "dull-eyed resignation" strikes me as contradicting "wild flares of rebelliousness" & "feral odor of sex that has grown claws" is particularly interesting in & of itself: something that's feral is something that's gone from tame back to its natural state of being wild: I suggest that sex is wild to begin w/ & that various forces often seek to tame it.. w/o success. Trying to tame sex is like trying to force trees to grow in the shape of boards, for all I know there's someone working on such a genetic modification idea as I write.. but I don't think it's a good idea.

"The mere idea of detectives at the Foothill Club was incongruous. It was one of those monumentally unpretentious places where you could still imagine that the sun had never set on the international set. It cost five thousand dollars to join, and membership was limited to three hundred. Even if you had the five thousand, you had to wait for one of the members to die. And then take a blood test, for blueness." - p 27

Ha ha! This bk was 1st published in 1960. $5,000 in 1960 wd be worth $44,742.74 in 2021 (according to the CPI Inflation Counter). One might ask: do such expensive clubs actually exist?

"Liberty National Golf Course in Jersey City, NJ
• Initiation fee: $450,000-$500,000; Annual dues: $29,000.
• Across from Manhattan, it has a marina and private vessel for its 200 members. It cost $250 million to build, making it the most expensive golf course ever built." - https://www.helenbrowngroup.com/a-peek-into-exclusive-golf-club-memberships/

The above website lists 22 that're "just a glimpse into some of the priciest golf clubs", the example isn't the most exclusive one. One club has a $1,000,000 inititation fee. I asked the internet what country clubs Jeffrey Epstein belonged to but didn't find the answer. I did find a list of his "high society contacts" here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-high-society-contacts.ht... . I suppose that if I wanted to pursue that further I cd check to see what country clubs those people belong to but I didn't bother. My personal country club is called my backyard. Then there're the public parks.

What I don't understand is why people hate on Epstein so much at the same time that Fifty Shades of Grey is a best-seller made into a movie? A friend of mine who's a mom gave her coming-of-age daughter a copy of Fifty Shades as a birthday present - wasn't that grooming her to be a masochistic sex slave to wealth & power?

But I di_____.

MacDonald observes some variety of class & culture.

""What else does she say?"

""Nothing. She says a woman is a fool to go to the hospital. Nobody ain't gonna make her. The hospital is where you die, she says. Her sister is a medica."" - p 70

The old woman is poor & Latino. Hence, in mainstream 'white' culture she might be perceived as ignorant for distrusting hospitals. But what if she's wise?

""We won't argue, Colonel. Haven't you ever been to a local doctor?"

""I don't go to doctors. The blasted doctors killed my mother."" - p 102

Now, he's a 'white' guy - but even he too wd be commonly perceived as a fool for rejecting doctors - &, yet, how many of us have had bad experiences w/ 'Western Medicine'? I have. See the "Personal Backstory" chapter of my Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC bk ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2020.09PANDEMIC.html ).

"I sat and watched her, She had reddish-brown hair, but in other respects her resemblance to Holly May was striking. It was a phenomenom I'd noticed before: whole generations of girls looked like the movie actresses of their period. Perhaps they made themselves up to resemble the actresses. Perhaps the actresses made themselves up to embody some common ideal. Or perhaps they became actresses by virtue of the fact that they already resembled the common ideal." - p 112

Think of Betty Page.

Back to the Latino subculture:

""This is Mr. Gunnarson," Padilla said. "He won't give the little one mal ojo. He is a lawyer trying to find out what happened here today."" - p 129

"Mal de ojo is a Spanish term meaning “evil eye,” which is frequently used to refer to a culturally specific illness common in Latin Americans and Latino immigrants in the United States. The origin of mal de ojo has been traced to the Eastern Mediterranean and Greco-Roman traditions, although many variations of this syndrome have existed for thousands of years. The widespread belief of the evil eye in Latin America is credited to the Spanish colonizers who brought it to the continent, amid combinations that resulted from indigenous and folk-healing systems. In Brazil, the equivalent for the evil eye is called “olho gordo” or “mau olhado,” that is translated as “fat eye.” Among Latin American popular cultures mal de ojo is generally believed to be caused by a strong stare full of jealousy, envy, or admiration directed at either vulnerable or perceived weaker individuals such as women or children. Certainly, babies and infants are considered at special risk for the evil eye, given the.." - https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-5659-0_476

""Is Mrs. Donato here?"

"Arcadia shook her head. "She went to the albolaria. She says there is a curse on the family which only the albolaria can take off."" - p 130

"Albolario

"Startled person, with little sense." - https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=https://diccionario...

"like all the other moms he knew, but boiling down herbs, extracting essences she used as a curandera, an albolaria, a folk healer." - p 247, The Edge of Chaos (fiction) by Pamela McCorduck

Interesting, eh? One online definition has an albolaria as a person w/ little sense while a fictional usage has it meaning what MacDonald apparently intends it to mean: a folk healer.

""Arcadia wants me to stay with her. She put Torres in the clink for nonsupport. Now she's scared to be alone herself. She thinks maybe she's getting susto, too."

""What is susto?"

""Bad sickness. The doctor says it's psychological, like. My mother says it's from an evil spirit."

""Which do you say?"

""I dunno. They taught in high school there was no such thing as evil spirits. But I dunno."" - p 133

"The neon sign of the bars and cafés hung like ignis fatuus on the twilight." - p 131

"In folklore, a will-o'-the-wisp, will-o'-wisp or ignis fatuus (Latin for 'giddy flame', plural ignes fatui), is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. The phenomenon is known in English folk belief, English folklore and much of European folklore by a variety of names, including jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, hinkypunk and hobby lantern and is said to mislead travelers by resembling a flickering lamp or lantern. In literature, will-o'-the-wisp metaphorically refers to a hope or goal that leads one on but is impossible to reach or something one finds sinister and confounding." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o'-the-wisp

MacDonald uses both Spanish & Latin. I'm reminded of Myles na gCopaleen's wonderful column for the Irish Times in wch I recall him using as many as 5 languages in one little piece. Those were the days, eh? Do novelists still dare to tread in such scholarly waters?

I enjoy writing that refers to a wide variety of things - including music, other writing, & the arts. Why not? If I know about what's referred to then there's an enriched image for me, if I don't, then, perhaps I learn something.

"The floodlights were burning outside Ferguson's house, throwing Chirico shadows along the cliff and up the driveway." - p 134

Anyone familiar w/ Giorgio de Chirico's early paintings knows how strong a part the shadows play. They show the striking effect of a sun not seen.

MacDonald doesn't shy from psychological types that some people might prefer to deny the existence of. Take the example of the castrating mother:

"["]I told him about the awful things that can happen to a boy, the disasters and the diseases. He was very meek and mild. He cried in my lap, and he promised that he would be a good boy forever. But he betrayed me, betrayed my confidence in him."

"The cat stood still, like a cat in a frieze, transfixed by her high, thin voice. Its moaning changed to a snarling, and its long tail erected itself.

""Be quiet, Harry, I had the same trouble with you until I had you fixed. Didn't I boy?" she asked liltingly. "But you still love your mother, don't you boy? Eh, Harry?"" - p 146

Of course, there are times when MacDonald seems like an old fuddy-duddy.

"The jukebox was playing rock—music for civilizations to deline by, man." - p 150

Spike Jones hated rock. Then again, I think of the Dadaists as having critiqued civilization as having produced WWI - not everyone sees only the bright side of civilization, it can be a killing machine too. Anyway, this bk's from 1960. What was the rock music of the time? Roy Orbison? Elvis Presley? Chubby Checker? The Everly Brothers? It was too early for the Mothers of Invention, Bonzo Dog Band, pretty much every rock group I've been interested in didn't come along until the mid-'60s & later. Soft Machine, Henry Cow, etc.

"The woman tittered like a broken xylophone. Unkempt as she was, her bleached hair stringy as hemp, her lips bulging in a pair of men's jeans, she dragged at the attention. Her eyes were blowtorch blue in a white, frozen face." - p 167

I deduce that the "lips bulging in a pair of men's jeans" were camel toe - or, in my slang, PVC (Prominent Vulva Crease). Why knock it?

""Don't get panicky now. She's in the nursery, and she's physically perfect. Not to mention precociously intelligent and aware. I can tell by the way she nurses. That makes the problem even more urgent. We have to give her a name, for her to start forming her personality around. We can't simply go on calling her Her, like something out of H. Rider Haggard."" - p 187

The reference being, of course, to Haggard's adventure novel She. Am I being overly explanatory? I just figure that as an ancient being I shd share possibly forgotten lore before I evaporate.

""She'll need the best criminal lawyer and the best psychiatrists your money can procure. They won't be able to get her off, of course, but they can save her from the extreme penalty. No one with strong financial backing is ever executed."" - p 215

Remember money? That was a physical thing that passed from one person to another. People acquired it in all sorts of ways. It's almost the same as what we have today - except that it wasn't quite so easy for the ruling elites to punish & reward. ( )

After Meet Me in the Morgue, this is the most Archer-esque of Ross Macdonald's non-Archer novels. (Contrary to popular belief, neither book was written before Macdonald began the Archer series in 1949; Meet Me appeared in 1953, while The Ferguson Affair was published in 1960.) Here, a defense lawyer named Gunnarson works a case involving a hot diamond and a kidnapped starlet, and struggles not to freeze out his pregnant, emotionally fragile wife in the process. Gunnarson's investigation takes him to a poor Hispanic neighborhood where he encounters a cast of tragic characters: people whose dreams were thwarted in a distant past that haunts them still. (As it turns out, things are even more complicated than they had first appeared, and the solution to the mystery is pretty far-fetched even for Ross Macdonald, in whose fictional world coincidence abounded. I'll offer no spoilers here, however.)

Typical Macdonald stuff, but he did it so beautifully. Four and a half stars. ( )

Somewhat dated as you would expect. But with a pioneer of the genre, I had some positive expectations of the author. It was a bit plodding through much of the book but then it took off, ending with plenty of interest. Macdonald's writing skills were evident throughout and were a joy compared with so many of today's authors. ( )

PI Lew Archer does not appear in this book. But not to worry, you can't go wrong with a Macdonald crime book. (Interesting that he did not use a Capital D after Mac.) ( )