Tras las elegantes avenidas de Los Ángeles, escondido en sus angostos callejones y en los patios traseros de casas aparentemente decentes, existe un submundo de violencia y tráfico de drogas que día a día se lleva por delante la vida de propios y extraños. El detective privado Lew Archer conoce muy bien qué se mueve entre bastidores en tan sórdidos ambientes, y por ello, recibe el encargo de encontrar a la dulce Galley Law.

Every now and then, I read one of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer mysteries. Lew Archer was a cop in L.A., until he refused to take graft, to protect politicos. Then he had to resign, so he made his career as a private detective. Archer is a modern-day white knight, gentleman, and protector of those who are vulnerable (and pretty teenage heroin addicts).
In this new Archer, a mother hires Archer to look for her daughter, galatea lawrence, who has supposedly disappeared with an Italian American gangster. Much gossip circles around this young woman, which Archer suspects is because she's beautiful. She is supposedly man-crazy, and not too discriminating in her choices. But could that be because she is attracted to Latin types? And remember, just because a woman is beautiful, doesn't mean she can't be deceitful.
The trail he follows leads through wrestling, heroin peddlers and addicts, and Archer is faced with some rather unsavory types. His life endangered, Archer is determined to find the truth, the "girl", and the money.
The best parts of this book is the California imagery: Palm springs, San Francisco, Santa monica. ( )

This is one of the early books in the Lew Archer series and therefore feels a bit fresher than some of the later books. It centres on a missing-persons case, which is a classic Archer problem to solve, and the atmosphere is well-calibrated noir. There’s violence occasionally, but no glory or glamour in it. Archer is, to me, a more deliberate noir hero. He’s contemplative and seems to really act for the sake of good without becoming too corrupted by his environment. I may be biased because Linwood Barclay, one of my favourite thriller authors, rates Macdonald as a formative influence on his own work, but of the hardboiled detective series I’ve tried, Archer is the one I’ve read the most of and the one I’ve *wanted* to read the most of. ( )

Tip top noir tough guy story... mean streets of la. ( )

review of
Ross MacDonald's The Way Some People Die
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 12, 2021

Onward w/ my Ross MacDonald spree. I cracked my rib a few days ago doing construction & that's preventing me from continuing w/ what I was building. I did so anyway for a few days but that made matters worse. So what better to do now than write reviews of seamy crime fiction? My own 15th bk is about to be released, But Not Limited To (Smattering 1), in full color & forced into a price higher than I want b/c of sd full color. I only get a tiny part of that price. Hey!, what the Heck! I only put 42 yrs into it, why shd I get anything at all? Buy it anyway, it'll be easier on you than giving up smoking.

"I took a cigarette from a pack in my pocket and automatically asked her: "Mind if I smoke?"

"Her face froze, as if I had suggested an obscenity. "Smoke if you must, sir. I know what a hold the nicotine habit has on its victims. Dr. Lawrence was a smoker for years, until he finally broke free, with God's help."" - p 5

That's not the same Lawrence as Lawrence of Arabia is it? The detective, Lew Archer, is interrogating a guy in a hospital rm who's been badly beaten. The guy doesn't want to answer so he gives w/ sarcasm.

""I'll tell you how it is," he said laboriously. "The other day I took a damn good look at my face in the mirror. I didn't like it. It didn't suit me. So I picked up a ball-peen hammer and gave it a working over. Is there anything else you want to know?"" - p 20

If that didn't make you SMILE than maybe this will:

"I said: "You're scared stiff, aren't you?"

"He tried to smile. The effect reminded me of a device I read about once for making insane people feel happy. It consisted of a couple of hooks that raised the corners of the mouth into smiling position. Its beneficiaries were forced to smile, and this made them feel like smiling, at least that was the theory." - pp 33-34

Did I hear you exclaim: Balderdasharoonie!! Well, check out Turner Scientific's "Smile Machine": http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/SM1992.Machine.html .

Why, MacDonald might've been writing about Turner Scientific's Waiting Room when he wrote this description:

"It had more decorations than a briefcase general: strings of colored bulbs above the bar, deer heads and stuffed swordfish, photographs of old baseball teams, paintings of cardboard mountains, German beer-mugs. On a platform over the kitchen door, an eagle with glaring glass eyes was attacking a stuffed mountain-lion. All the group needed to complete it was a stuffed taxidermist." - p 82

We get a glimpse into Archer's sad personal love life. I feel ya, Archer, but, ahem, not in that way, sorry.

"It was nearly two o'clock when I reached my section of the city. I lived in a five-room bungalow on a middle-class residential street between Hollywood and Los Angeles. The house and the mortgage on it were mementos of my one and only marriage. Since the divorce I never went home till sleep was overdue. It was overdue now. The last few miles down the night-humming boulevard I drove by muscle memory, half-asleep. My consciousness didn't take over until I was in my driveway. I saw the garage door white in my headlights, a blank wall at the end of a journey from nowhere to nowhere." - p 112

&, so, I managed to not spoil the plot for you at all. In fact, I gave you so little that, as far as you know, the way some people die is from wearing smile machines, like dogs caught in copulation. ( )