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Lew Archer #5
Find a Victim
Las Cruces wasn’t a place most travelers would think to stop. But after Lew Archer plays the good samaritan and picks up a bloodied hitchhiker, he finds himself in town for a few days awaiting a murder inquest. A hijacked truck full of liquor and an evidence box full of marijuana, $20,000 from a big time bank heist by a small time crook, corruption, adultery, incest, prodigal daughters and abused wives all make the little town seem a lot more interesting than any guide book ever could. And as the murder rate rises, Archer finds himself caught up in mystery where everyone is a suspect and everyone’s a victim.
215 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
58 people are currently reading
700 people want to read
About the author
Ross Macdonald
134books777followersRoss Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 177 reviews
September 27, 2019
This is by no means the first good Lew Archer, but it is the first that feels like quintessential Archer to me, its characters confined to narrow psychological spaces and dwarfed by the immensity of family history.
Except for a barely relevant--though exciting--shootout with hijackers, everything in this novel contributes to the conclusion, and the last chapter is extraordinarily powerful and effective. Macdonald's portraits of the police chief of Los Cruces and his wife--good people enmeshed in a dark pattern--linger in the memory.
November 22, 2020
Ross Macdonald opened this novel with the following lines:
"He was the ghastliest hitchhiker who ever thumbed me. He rose on his knees in the ditch. His eyes were black holes in his yellow face, his mouth a bright smear of red like a clown's painted grin."
Some people might be put off by those lines. When I read them, I was hooked into reading Find a Victim.
"I thought of the palm rat running in his shadow on the sidewalk. He lived by his wits in darkness, gnawed human leavings, listened behind walls for the sounds of danger. I liked the palm rat better when I thought of him, and myself less."
"There were no chairs in the room. I sat on the bed. Love or something like it had broken its back."
"I found a doctor and had eight stitches put in my face. The doctor seemed to take it as a matter of course and asked no questions. When the job was finished, though, he asked me for twenty five dollars in cash. He was that kind of a doctor, and I was that kind of a patient."
There are those who say that Ross Macdonald wasn't worthy to inherit the mantle of Raymond Chandler. I'm not one of those.
"He was the ghastliest hitchhiker who ever thumbed me. He rose on his knees in the ditch. His eyes were black holes in his yellow face, his mouth a bright smear of red like a clown's painted grin."
Some people might be put off by those lines. When I read them, I was hooked into reading Find a Victim.
"I thought of the palm rat running in his shadow on the sidewalk. He lived by his wits in darkness, gnawed human leavings, listened behind walls for the sounds of danger. I liked the palm rat better when I thought of him, and myself less."
"There were no chairs in the room. I sat on the bed. Love or something like it had broken its back."
"I found a doctor and had eight stitches put in my face. The doctor seemed to take it as a matter of course and asked no questions. When the job was finished, though, he asked me for twenty five dollars in cash. He was that kind of a doctor, and I was that kind of a patient."
There are those who say that Ross Macdonald wasn't worthy to inherit the mantle of Raymond Chandler. I'm not one of those.
June 8, 2023
Money and marijuana, the stuff that dreams are made of.
Occasionally after reading a Lew Archer novel I have trouble recalling who exactly hired Archer and why by the time I've finished the novel.
This time around Archer is on his way to Sacramento to give a report on narcotics distribution in the southern counties to a state legislative committee. Outside the town of Las Cruces, Archer is flagged down by what looks to be a hitchhiker. After passing the hitchiker, he looks in his rear-view mirror and sees the man stumble to the ground, apparently injured.
He backs his car up, gets out of his car, and goes to the aid of the hitchhiker only to see that he's badly injured, bleeding profusely from a bullet wound in his chest.
Archer puts the injured man across the backseat of his car and drives for miles past an abandoned Marine Corps base until he comes upon a motor court. The owner displays a pronounced indifference to the seriously injured man but his wife phones for an ambulance from the local hospital and then calls the sheriff's office.
Archer notes the obvious tension between the motel owner and his wife. Eventually, Archer finds his services are required by the wife of the motel owner.
And we're off!
"Is it safe, though, for you to go back to the city?"
"I don't know if it's safe. It should be interesting."
She said in a small, clear voice: "You're a brave man, aren't you?"
"Not brave. Merely stubborn. I don't like to see the jerks and hustlers get away with too much..."
"You'll stop them," she said.
"If they don't stop me first."
Lots of violence in this one.
Several murders.
A gang-rape.
A bank hold-up.
A truck hijacking.
Lew Archer beats up bad-guys and gets beaten up by bad guys.
Quite a bit of gun-play. The entire book smells of cordite.
There is also memorable dialogue like the following:
"Did you ever have the feeling that time had stopped for you? That you were living in a vacuum, without a future or even a past?"
"I had it once," I said. "The week after my wife left me."
"I didn't know you had a wife."
"That was a long time ago."
"Why did she leave you?"
"She said she couldn't stand the life I led. That I gave too much to other people and not enough to her. And I guess she was right in a way. But it really boiled down to the fact that we weren't in love any more. At least, one of us wasn't."
"Which one?"
"I'd rather not go into it. Exhuming corpses is an ugly business."
This one's another stand-alone. No references to previous cases. It's as good a place for a newcomer to the Lew Archer series to start as any.
Highest possible recommendation!.
"This is a dirty business I'm in. All I can do is watch myself and keep it as clean as I can."
June 8, 2023
03/ 2021
(from 1955)
I can see why I liked this so much eleven years ago. It is a very good mystery plot. At the time I had read two of his books in my twenties. I thought they were good, but they didn't strike me as better than other things. When I read this in 2010, I was in my thirties and it really penetrated, and ever since I've believed Ross MacDonald is the best. Writer of a detective series.
Lew Archer does get beat up an awful lot. And it's described in long, loving detail. Sometimes this is a bit much for me. I liked the desert scene, the canyons and the shootout.
June 2010
I've read and enjoyed some Ross MacDonald in the past, but I think I liked "Find a Victim" the best. Wonderful writing, really good mystery.
(from 1955)
I can see why I liked this so much eleven years ago. It is a very good mystery plot. At the time I had read two of his books in my twenties. I thought they were good, but they didn't strike me as better than other things. When I read this in 2010, I was in my thirties and it really penetrated, and ever since I've believed Ross MacDonald is the best. Writer of a detective series.
Lew Archer does get beat up an awful lot. And it's described in long, loving detail. Sometimes this is a bit much for me. I liked the desert scene, the canyons and the shootout.
June 2010
I've read and enjoyed some Ross MacDonald in the past, but I think I liked "Find a Victim" the best. Wonderful writing, really good mystery.
March 14, 2014
Ross Macdonald is the one of originators of the hard boiled detective novel along with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Although his novels were written over 50 years ago, they still stand up with anything that's written today.
Find a Victim is one of the better entries in the Lew Archer series, even though his best work was to come (see The Doomsters, The Chill or The Underground Man).
Unlike some of today's private eyes (I'm looking at you Spenser), Archer wasn't afraid to get the crap kicked out him to facilitate the plot. Also, Archer doesn't have an annoying anorexic girl friend or an army of thugs at his beck and call.
Sure, the writing of these types of novels has evolved, but the Archer novels are still the real deal.
Find a Victim is one of the better entries in the Lew Archer series, even though his best work was to come (see The Doomsters, The Chill or The Underground Man).
Unlike some of today's private eyes (I'm looking at you Spenser), Archer wasn't afraid to get the crap kicked out him to facilitate the plot. Also, Archer doesn't have an annoying anorexic girl friend or an army of thugs at his beck and call.
Sure, the writing of these types of novels has evolved, but the Archer novels are still the real deal.
January 5, 2024
I once bought a lot of Ross Macdonald's novels about the private detective Lew Archer and his adventures uncovering the rotten underside of the optimistic prosperous post-WW2 United States, at a sale in an antique bookstore.
That series has since become my personal gold standard for 1930's-1950's American hardboiled detective novels.
By the time the 5th Lew Archer novel ”Find a Victim� hit bookstore shelves in 1954, there was a well-defined list of Things You Can Count On from that series: Setting is usually a small town in the Southwestern US with a dark secret, the rogues' gallery includes a hopelessly dysfunctional upper class family, our hero gets even more introspective and philosophical than Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe ever did, lots of poetic and picturesque descriptions of the Southwestern US' desert landscapes. The fact that Macdonald usually picked small isolated towns as his settings did a lot of work for me in giving his novels a distinctive feel from the standard densely populated busy city setting of the genre.
”Find a Victim� has a faster-moving and more action-packed plot than most other books in the series I've read so far, with the possible exception of ”The Barbarous Coast� which is a level more cartoonish than usual. In ”Find a Victim� it reaches the point where each chapter has a new twist where a character double-crosses another or Lew Archer discovers some new level to the conspiracy, and I kept reading to find out whatever happens next or how the story ends. Yet as convoluted and chaotic as the plot gets, at no point do I stop taking it seriously.
Recommended to anyone who likes this type of detective novel.
That series has since become my personal gold standard for 1930's-1950's American hardboiled detective novels.
By the time the 5th Lew Archer novel ”Find a Victim� hit bookstore shelves in 1954, there was a well-defined list of Things You Can Count On from that series: Setting is usually a small town in the Southwestern US with a dark secret, the rogues' gallery includes a hopelessly dysfunctional upper class family, our hero gets even more introspective and philosophical than Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe ever did, lots of poetic and picturesque descriptions of the Southwestern US' desert landscapes. The fact that Macdonald usually picked small isolated towns as his settings did a lot of work for me in giving his novels a distinctive feel from the standard densely populated busy city setting of the genre.
”Find a Victim� has a faster-moving and more action-packed plot than most other books in the series I've read so far, with the possible exception of ”The Barbarous Coast� which is a level more cartoonish than usual. In ”Find a Victim� it reaches the point where each chapter has a new twist where a character double-crosses another or Lew Archer discovers some new level to the conspiracy, and I kept reading to find out whatever happens next or how the story ends. Yet as convoluted and chaotic as the plot gets, at no point do I stop taking it seriously.
Recommended to anyone who likes this type of detective novel.
July 10, 2019
I like to vary my reading. It's been a good while since I last read a hardboiled private investigator book. So, I went searching at my public library for a satisfying read. Find a Victim (1954) was the fifth title in Ross Macdonald's celebrated P.I. Lew Archer Mystery Series. I give it a big thumb's-up. Lew plays a good Samaritan, and the tale quickly unfolds from there. I don't remember his stories being so violent, but I guess it's almost inevitable in a hardboiled narrative. I like how Lew gives us a few glimpses into his past life, which I won't go into here. The murder plot takes a few unexpected twists, adding to the fun. The California setting, like always, is vividly depicted. I still have a few unread Lew Archer books waiting, so I'll be returning to his rough private detective world soon, I'm sure.
September 6, 2024
“Find a Victim� is probably the best of the early Lew Archer novels in terms of conciseness and brevity. Almost all of the action takes place in and around a small town near Bakersfield, Las Cruces, which does not exist in reality. Archer is away from his normal haunts in Los Angeles and the troubles of the rich folks who normally hire his services. In fact, here, he cannot be said to really have a client. At one point, he gets a bit pushy and hires himself a client for minimal money, but later resigns from that assignment to continue his investigations without having to answer to anyone.
It is a case that Archer literally stumbles over as he is on his way to Sacramento for a legislative hearing. At first, he thinks it is a hitchhiker by the side of the road, but soon realizes that someone, later identified as Tony Aquista, a truck driver, has been shot and that they do not have long to live. Realizing that there was no one around and no phone nearby, he heads to the nearest location, a motel where he is barely made welcome despite making clear that he has an emergency in his backseat, someone who is unlikely to make it without an ambulance and even then it would probably be a lost cause and is. Despite being told that it was really none of his business, Archer sticks around in this small intertwined town where everybody is related to everyone and everyone knows the gossip on everyone else to pursue justice for the victim, particularly since no one else, not even the sheriff, seems that interested.
The mysteries soon add up as they usually do when the motel manager is missing and Archer finds the motel owner, ditching his wife, and meeting someone whose mouth was as sullen as sin and “Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn’t begun to sour.�
Archer explains himself to a prospective client as someone who has a reputation down south, although not a very pleasant one. He also reveals a slight bit of his past � that he felt that time stopped for him and he was living in a vacuum without a future for a week after his wife left him, but it did not last. He also explains that he is not brave, merely stubborn and does not like to see jerks and hustlers get away with too much or they might take over entirely.
This small town has plenty of dirty secrets about who is sleeping with who, who is jealous of who, and who is using who to get away with bank robbery and molestation. Archer sticks around to find out the truth about what happened as they bodies start piling up and even Archer had no clue how things would play out until the very end. This is everything you would want in a Lew Archer and there is never a dull moment. Never.
It is a case that Archer literally stumbles over as he is on his way to Sacramento for a legislative hearing. At first, he thinks it is a hitchhiker by the side of the road, but soon realizes that someone, later identified as Tony Aquista, a truck driver, has been shot and that they do not have long to live. Realizing that there was no one around and no phone nearby, he heads to the nearest location, a motel where he is barely made welcome despite making clear that he has an emergency in his backseat, someone who is unlikely to make it without an ambulance and even then it would probably be a lost cause and is. Despite being told that it was really none of his business, Archer sticks around in this small intertwined town where everybody is related to everyone and everyone knows the gossip on everyone else to pursue justice for the victim, particularly since no one else, not even the sheriff, seems that interested.
The mysteries soon add up as they usually do when the motel manager is missing and Archer finds the motel owner, ditching his wife, and meeting someone whose mouth was as sullen as sin and “Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn’t begun to sour.�
Archer explains himself to a prospective client as someone who has a reputation down south, although not a very pleasant one. He also reveals a slight bit of his past � that he felt that time stopped for him and he was living in a vacuum without a future for a week after his wife left him, but it did not last. He also explains that he is not brave, merely stubborn and does not like to see jerks and hustlers get away with too much or they might take over entirely.
This small town has plenty of dirty secrets about who is sleeping with who, who is jealous of who, and who is using who to get away with bank robbery and molestation. Archer sticks around to find out the truth about what happened as they bodies start piling up and even Archer had no clue how things would play out until the very end. This is everything you would want in a Lew Archer and there is never a dull moment. Never.
April 20, 2011
More like Find a Plot, a smartass might say. Fortunately, my ass isn't that smart. I like my Archer like I like my women: sinewy, vaguely wicked, without an overabundance of exclamation points. This one reminded me of the last baloney sandwiched I downed: a little thin. It wasn't as bad as waking up naked next to an odiferous Audrina Patridge and realizing you have a bad taste in your mouth. Nope, not that bad. Just sorta like the Dali Lama's sex life: not much to talk about.
I blame the setting. The whole gimmick is Archer's off his turf, see, thrown into a small city where the locals are lapping up their own inbred corruption. Only the locals aren't that grotesque or dangerous, and by the time you hit the big revelation (think Chinatown), well, you've seen it done with a bigger gut-punch.
Still, a humdrum Archer is more fun than just about anything this side of a midget hooker with a monocle. They can't all be Farrah Fawcett. Sometimes you gotta go Shelley Hack.
I blame the setting. The whole gimmick is Archer's off his turf, see, thrown into a small city where the locals are lapping up their own inbred corruption. Only the locals aren't that grotesque or dangerous, and by the time you hit the big revelation (think Chinatown), well, you've seen it done with a bigger gut-punch.
Still, a humdrum Archer is more fun than just about anything this side of a midget hooker with a monocle. They can't all be Farrah Fawcett. Sometimes you gotta go Shelley Hack.
October 3, 2012
Good noir fun from a classic master of the genre
Read on the plane from Vienna to London
Lew Archer finds himself in a small Californian town near the Nevada border picking up a dead body by the side of the road. The town seems to be populated by angry and agressive people, all suspects, all ready to fight or f*ck at the drop of a hat. This is a case Archer could never resist!
A great read, only my second Archer novel and the differences between the two are astounding. MacDonald doesn't seem to have a set style or tone for this series so far but of the many he wrote I'm sure he must have settled on something by the end.
Archer is your typicl smooth talking, moral, PI who has a way with the ladies and makes enemies real easy. If you like the style MacDonald is your man.
Read on the plane from Vienna to London
Lew Archer finds himself in a small Californian town near the Nevada border picking up a dead body by the side of the road. The town seems to be populated by angry and agressive people, all suspects, all ready to fight or f*ck at the drop of a hat. This is a case Archer could never resist!
A great read, only my second Archer novel and the differences between the two are astounding. MacDonald doesn't seem to have a set style or tone for this series so far but of the many he wrote I'm sure he must have settled on something by the end.
Archer is your typicl smooth talking, moral, PI who has a way with the ladies and makes enemies real easy. If you like the style MacDonald is your man.
June 26, 2019
COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK 146 (of 250)
Hook -4 stars: "He was the ghastliest hitchhiker who ever thumbed me. He rose on his knees in a ditch. His eyes were black holes in his yellow face, his mouth a bright smear of red like a clown's painted grin. The arm he raised overbalanced him. He fell forward on his face gain," is the opening paragraph. Lew Archer, P.I. stops, pulls the guy into his car, and stops at the nearest motel to call an ambulance. Good opening, interesting. Archer is smart enough and tough enough to take a chance.
PACE -2: This novel rambles along with 2 separate plots: 1) the hitchhiker had been driving a truck with a payload of $70K in bourbon but someone has killed him and the truck has disappeared and 2) Ross MacDonald's specialty, a family with all kinds of problems. I kept waiting and waiting for the plots to merge....
PLOT - 4: ....but they really don't, or rather, they don't seem to. But there is a reason. in Plot 1, Mr. Don Kerrigan has ordered the bourbon (transported via Meyer Trucking) then sells his bar right after the bourbon disappears, so he's looking for insurance money so that he can run off with Jo, a 'dirty little thing' who doesn't seem very attractive at all. Don Kerrigan packs up as if he is taking off, but Don's assistant in crime, a red-headed kid is caught and the plan is off. Then about 50% through the book we move to Plot 2, in which Sheriff Brand Church hates Don Kerrigan, and the feeling is mutual. Sheriff Church (married to Hilde, Meyer's first daughter) is hot for Ann, Hilde's younger sister. The back cover blurb says "Archer finds himself caught up in a mystery in which everyone is a suspect and everyone's a victim." Yes, that's exactly it: everyone is playing both sides. I had a hard time with this MacDonald work at first because I couldn't identify anyone as heroic or as a villain or as an anti-hero. But that's the point and I gotta hand it to MacDonald for turning in a rather odd work.
CAST - 3: Their are lots of fights for anything, any place. Ann Meyer supposedly is a full woman by age 15 and is 'going out' with everyone of any social level or color. Enter nice guy Tony, a Spaniard, and he is infatuated with Ann, but he's dead as the book opens. He might be the ONLY decent person in the book, the only one with no secrets to hide, the one protective of Anne even as she is seeing other guys and he's the first one dead. He's the one who can't be a murderer, who is victim #1. And maybe that's the point, that everyone else could have killed him, and anyone could be killing the rest of the cast as they die off. Yes, literally, find 'A' victim among many.
ATMOSPHERE - 3: One of the big tropes of Southern California crime fiction is a 'cabin on a lake' to get people moving back and forth, stopping at gas stations, etc., giving the author a chance to described their beloved Southern California. (I loved it too, once in the past.) In MacDonald's books , we usually have a rich family in a big house, a handful of people on the poor side of town, and someone has a love nest in a high rise downtown or a cabin up in the mountains. It serves to get people driving around from house to house, up the hills, back down. It usually works. Back to the blurb on the back of the book. The hitcher is mentioned along with Archer, but there are no other names. Again, it's like the author expects us to just name someone. Early in this book, Archer is on his way to Sacramento to deliver drugs locked in his trunk as evidence for a court case. But later in the book, there is no mention of Archer ever actually continuing his journey, and there is a scene where Archer takes some reefers out of a locked box and gives five to a lady in 'need' of pot. It's true, private investigators often play both sides. Here, all the characters seem to be playing both sides.
SUMMARY: 3.2. There are some things here that were troubling, at first. It seems like most of the characters are good, then bad, then good again. But like Archer, is everyone playing both sides? Yes, and once you realize that, this one works. Getting there might be tough for some, as it was for me.
BOOK 146 (of 250)
Hook -4 stars: "He was the ghastliest hitchhiker who ever thumbed me. He rose on his knees in a ditch. His eyes were black holes in his yellow face, his mouth a bright smear of red like a clown's painted grin. The arm he raised overbalanced him. He fell forward on his face gain," is the opening paragraph. Lew Archer, P.I. stops, pulls the guy into his car, and stops at the nearest motel to call an ambulance. Good opening, interesting. Archer is smart enough and tough enough to take a chance.
PACE -2: This novel rambles along with 2 separate plots: 1) the hitchhiker had been driving a truck with a payload of $70K in bourbon but someone has killed him and the truck has disappeared and 2) Ross MacDonald's specialty, a family with all kinds of problems. I kept waiting and waiting for the plots to merge....
PLOT - 4: ....but they really don't, or rather, they don't seem to. But there is a reason. in Plot 1, Mr. Don Kerrigan has ordered the bourbon (transported via Meyer Trucking) then sells his bar right after the bourbon disappears, so he's looking for insurance money so that he can run off with Jo, a 'dirty little thing' who doesn't seem very attractive at all. Don Kerrigan packs up as if he is taking off, but Don's assistant in crime, a red-headed kid is caught and the plan is off. Then about 50% through the book we move to Plot 2, in which Sheriff Brand Church hates Don Kerrigan, and the feeling is mutual. Sheriff Church (married to Hilde, Meyer's first daughter) is hot for Ann, Hilde's younger sister. The back cover blurb says "Archer finds himself caught up in a mystery in which everyone is a suspect and everyone's a victim." Yes, that's exactly it: everyone is playing both sides. I had a hard time with this MacDonald work at first because I couldn't identify anyone as heroic or as a villain or as an anti-hero. But that's the point and I gotta hand it to MacDonald for turning in a rather odd work.
CAST - 3: Their are lots of fights for anything, any place. Ann Meyer supposedly is a full woman by age 15 and is 'going out' with everyone of any social level or color. Enter nice guy Tony, a Spaniard, and he is infatuated with Ann, but he's dead as the book opens. He might be the ONLY decent person in the book, the only one with no secrets to hide, the one protective of Anne even as she is seeing other guys and he's the first one dead. He's the one who can't be a murderer, who is victim #1. And maybe that's the point, that everyone else could have killed him, and anyone could be killing the rest of the cast as they die off. Yes, literally, find 'A' victim among many.
ATMOSPHERE - 3: One of the big tropes of Southern California crime fiction is a 'cabin on a lake' to get people moving back and forth, stopping at gas stations, etc., giving the author a chance to described their beloved Southern California. (I loved it too, once in the past.) In MacDonald's books , we usually have a rich family in a big house, a handful of people on the poor side of town, and someone has a love nest in a high rise downtown or a cabin up in the mountains. It serves to get people driving around from house to house, up the hills, back down. It usually works. Back to the blurb on the back of the book. The hitcher is mentioned along with Archer, but there are no other names. Again, it's like the author expects us to just name someone. Early in this book, Archer is on his way to Sacramento to deliver drugs locked in his trunk as evidence for a court case. But later in the book, there is no mention of Archer ever actually continuing his journey, and there is a scene where Archer takes some reefers out of a locked box and gives five to a lady in 'need' of pot. It's true, private investigators often play both sides. Here, all the characters seem to be playing both sides.
SUMMARY: 3.2. There are some things here that were troubling, at first. It seems like most of the characters are good, then bad, then good again. But like Archer, is everyone playing both sides? Yes, and once you realize that, this one works. Getting there might be tough for some, as it was for me.
September 30, 2017
Moments of brilliance in a puddle of mud, with an ending so clichéd and stupid you just want to hurl the book away from you.
Some of Macdonald's prose is quite wonderful, see below. But much of it is so dry and clinical and overwritten, you just want to choke. There is almost no "sharp dialogue" or banter here, a real negative in the crime-noir business.
The plot is very complex, with lots of obvious red-herrings, clearly thrown in to disguise just how confused Macdonald's story really is.
I read The Galton Case before, and I was not impressed. I'm done with Ross Macdonald now, not my cup of tea.
My advice: Don't waste your time.
Just read the lovely quotes below....
1% ... beautiful....
"It was one of those lulls in time when you can hear your heart ticking your life away, and nothing else. The sun had fallen behind the coastal range, and the valley was filling with twilight. A flight of blackbirds crossed the sky like visible wind, blowing and whiplashing."
9% ... beautiful ...
"She rose and came into the center of the room.... Her odor was faint and fragrant, like nostalgia for half-forgotten summers. Her troubled whisper might have been the voice of the breathing darkness: “What does it all mean?�
11% ... hard-boiled ...
"Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn’t begun to sour."
30% ... Macdonald's description of the young junky whore is so visceral. It makes me cry inside.
32% ... True "hard boiled" prose ... always has an undercurrent of cruelty and fate:
"She backed into the purple-lighted room, a tiny girl no taller than my shoulder, with a sleek small head and a rich body. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. I wondered how she would look when she was forty, if she lived that long.
"The room was like a segment of her future waiting for her fate to overtake it. A black iron standing lamp with a red silk shade lined with blue cast its unreal light on red drapes hung from twisted iron rods, a red mohair divan piled with cheap magazines, a rug whose color and design had been trampled into indistinguishable grime. The only decoration on the yellow plaster walls was a last year’s cheesecake calendar. A bored hand had given the blonde girl in the picture a mustache and goatee, and hair on her chest."
61% ....
"She said in a small, clear voice: “You’re a brave man, aren’t you?� “Not brave. Merely stubborn. I don’t like to see the jerks and hustlers get away with too much. Or they might take over entirely.�
Well, just look at D.C. today: They did takeover.
80% ... exquisite ...
" ... she was in there, lying with her knees pulled up like a child in an iron womb. There was a badge of blood on the front of her sun-dress.... I leaned over to look at her face. Tears gathered behind my eyes and almost blinded me. Not that she mattered to me.... It was anger I felt, against the helplessness of the dead and my own helplessness. Overhead, the buzzards turned in wobbly circles like tipsy undertakers. The sun’s insane red eye looked over the canyon’s edge."
92% ... blah blah blah. Crappy plot twist. I don't buy it. None of the characters in this book noticed in the days of this mystery how much ? Archer is supposedly a DETECTIVE. This is pretty dumb ... insulting, even.
97% ... what's worse is the long stupid clichéd ending. Dull, dull, dull.
.
Some of Macdonald's prose is quite wonderful, see below. But much of it is so dry and clinical and overwritten, you just want to choke. There is almost no "sharp dialogue" or banter here, a real negative in the crime-noir business.
The plot is very complex, with lots of obvious red-herrings, clearly thrown in to disguise just how confused Macdonald's story really is.
I read The Galton Case before, and I was not impressed. I'm done with Ross Macdonald now, not my cup of tea.
My advice: Don't waste your time.
Just read the lovely quotes below....
1% ... beautiful....
"It was one of those lulls in time when you can hear your heart ticking your life away, and nothing else. The sun had fallen behind the coastal range, and the valley was filling with twilight. A flight of blackbirds crossed the sky like visible wind, blowing and whiplashing."
9% ... beautiful ...
"She rose and came into the center of the room.... Her odor was faint and fragrant, like nostalgia for half-forgotten summers. Her troubled whisper might have been the voice of the breathing darkness: “What does it all mean?�
11% ... hard-boiled ...
"Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn’t begun to sour."
30% ... Macdonald's description of the young junky whore is so visceral. It makes me cry inside.
32% ... True "hard boiled" prose ... always has an undercurrent of cruelty and fate:
"She backed into the purple-lighted room, a tiny girl no taller than my shoulder, with a sleek small head and a rich body. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. I wondered how she would look when she was forty, if she lived that long.
"The room was like a segment of her future waiting for her fate to overtake it. A black iron standing lamp with a red silk shade lined with blue cast its unreal light on red drapes hung from twisted iron rods, a red mohair divan piled with cheap magazines, a rug whose color and design had been trampled into indistinguishable grime. The only decoration on the yellow plaster walls was a last year’s cheesecake calendar. A bored hand had given the blonde girl in the picture a mustache and goatee, and hair on her chest."
61% ....
"She said in a small, clear voice: “You’re a brave man, aren’t you?� “Not brave. Merely stubborn. I don’t like to see the jerks and hustlers get away with too much. Or they might take over entirely.�
Well, just look at D.C. today: They did takeover.
80% ... exquisite ...
" ... she was in there, lying with her knees pulled up like a child in an iron womb. There was a badge of blood on the front of her sun-dress.... I leaned over to look at her face. Tears gathered behind my eyes and almost blinded me. Not that she mattered to me.... It was anger I felt, against the helplessness of the dead and my own helplessness. Overhead, the buzzards turned in wobbly circles like tipsy undertakers. The sun’s insane red eye looked over the canyon’s edge."
92% ... blah blah blah. Crappy plot twist. I don't buy it. None of the characters in this book noticed in the days of this mystery how much ? Archer is supposedly a DETECTIVE. This is pretty dumb ... insulting, even.
97% ... what's worse is the long stupid clichéd ending. Dull, dull, dull.
.
November 24, 2019
Archer picks up a gunshot victim while driving through a one horse town. As no self respecting noir can have just one victim, a few more bodies pile up. Archer is soon left with a pervert for a client, a sheriff with a vendetta against him and a lot of beautiful women in a variety of sticky situations. The plot as always in a Macdonald book manages to distribute a bit of pathos to all the players. However it is not as devilishly twisted or sophisticated as its immediate predecessor The Ivory Grin. It's pretty easy to guess the killer. I have always been fond of Macdonald's focus on psychology behind the crime but here he brings it down to a Dr. Phil level - derivative generalities that is more pop psychology than any form of insight.
The writing was also more consistent in the last two Archers. The old bad habits have reared their ugly heads. Archer gets jumped too many times. The metaphors are occasionally given so much rope that they hang themselves. None of them are deal breakers but the progress Macdonald made as an author since Archer #3 seems to have been negated. However when he gets it right, it is as good as it gets in noir. Sample. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour. The dialogue stings and the atmosphere suffocates. They have not suffered like the overwrought metaphors.
Macdonald instills a lot of personality even in the cameo characters that show up for a chapter or two (see Jo's grandfather here as an example). So it's strange Archer himself is not more well developed. Archer is given a hint of a romance here, he shares a few details about his past. It is a step in the right direction though Macdonald does not follow up on it. Archer is obviously a Marlowe clone. But whereas Marlowe was as laconic, he was far more interesting.
Every part of Find a Victim feels like two steps forward, one step back for Macdonald the author. A lot of good ideas but some of their execution is rushed. The net effect is undoubtedly still positive. And if my review has sounded inconsistent with the rating that is because I have mainly compared it against the previous entries of the series. As an Archer entry it might be one of the weaker ones but as a standalone noir, this is still pretty good. 3.5 gets bumped up. Rating - 4/5
The writing was also more consistent in the last two Archers. The old bad habits have reared their ugly heads. Archer gets jumped too many times. The metaphors are occasionally given so much rope that they hang themselves. None of them are deal breakers but the progress Macdonald made as an author since Archer #3 seems to have been negated. However when he gets it right, it is as good as it gets in noir. Sample. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour. The dialogue stings and the atmosphere suffocates. They have not suffered like the overwrought metaphors.
Macdonald instills a lot of personality even in the cameo characters that show up for a chapter or two (see Jo's grandfather here as an example). So it's strange Archer himself is not more well developed. Archer is given a hint of a romance here, he shares a few details about his past. It is a step in the right direction though Macdonald does not follow up on it. Archer is obviously a Marlowe clone. But whereas Marlowe was as laconic, he was far more interesting.
Every part of Find a Victim feels like two steps forward, one step back for Macdonald the author. A lot of good ideas but some of their execution is rushed. The net effect is undoubtedly still positive. And if my review has sounded inconsistent with the rating that is because I have mainly compared it against the previous entries of the series. As an Archer entry it might be one of the weaker ones but as a standalone noir, this is still pretty good. 3.5 gets bumped up. Rating - 4/5
August 12, 2010
Dashiell Hammett, Ross MacDonald, and Dave Goodis are heads above the rest of the classic crime novelists. I'd easily take MacDonald over Chandler any day. Close runners up to these, and still above Chandler for me, are James M. Cain, James Crumley, and Jim Thompson, though each of those are have one foot in a particular subset of crime fiction that involves the problem of the grift or the confidence scheme, and to complicate things further, this often involves their own emotional blindspots taking them for a ride on the circumstances they find themselves in, so i'm not sure they really fall into the straight crime/mystery section that is lazily tagged as pulp.
I'll save Chandler for another day. But briefly, i do agree with James Ellroy (which doesn't happen often), who once claimed that Hammett writes about characters that he fears he could be, and Chandler writes about characters that he wishes he could be. There is a projection of male fantasy in Chandler that i find rings false.
If you are a big fan of the characters Bogart plays, or of the screen adaptation of Double Indemnity, then you'll love the complications of plot and condensed dialogue and narratives of Ross MacDonald.
I've read about 15 of MacDonald's books now. Not a single one has been a disappointment or a mis-step. There are a few in print, but the vast majority of them are found fading and sloughing dust in second hand stores. Were there any justice, this stuff would be central to anyone's reading in mysteries/crime fiction.
This is a good way to get through a hot and hazy afternoon.
I'll save Chandler for another day. But briefly, i do agree with James Ellroy (which doesn't happen often), who once claimed that Hammett writes about characters that he fears he could be, and Chandler writes about characters that he wishes he could be. There is a projection of male fantasy in Chandler that i find rings false.
If you are a big fan of the characters Bogart plays, or of the screen adaptation of Double Indemnity, then you'll love the complications of plot and condensed dialogue and narratives of Ross MacDonald.
I've read about 15 of MacDonald's books now. Not a single one has been a disappointment or a mis-step. There are a few in print, but the vast majority of them are found fading and sloughing dust in second hand stores. Were there any justice, this stuff would be central to anyone's reading in mysteries/crime fiction.
This is a good way to get through a hot and hazy afternoon.
November 14, 2021
if you like this review, i now have website:
.???: 2000s: basic problem is i like almost everything ross macdonald did: this one counted five is because it has such a bittersweet resolution, when indeed you follow the title. it is more the web and weave of emotional connections of past and present, child and parent, than just a mystery to solve. i like how arbitrary, how inevitably, lew archer is drawn into this case. and when the motives of the suspect, of family, of other characters, emerge, it is not so much a revealed plot but the latent plot that resolves like the title. hard so hard to live in this world...
.???: 2000s: basic problem is i like almost everything ross macdonald did: this one counted five is because it has such a bittersweet resolution, when indeed you follow the title. it is more the web and weave of emotional connections of past and present, child and parent, than just a mystery to solve. i like how arbitrary, how inevitably, lew archer is drawn into this case. and when the motives of the suspect, of family, of other characters, emerge, it is not so much a revealed plot but the latent plot that resolves like the title. hard so hard to live in this world...
July 26, 2020
Lew stops to help a dying man and in doing so he finds himself dragged into investigating a missing woman, murder and much more. Essential reading for those of us who like well written, well plotted crime.
June 24, 2013
Another great Lew Archer detective noir book from Ross Macdonald. This one really reminded me of "The Lady in the Lake" by Raymond Chandler because it took Archer out of his usual L.A. comfort zone and had him traipsing around in the countryside.
As this series goes on Archer becomes a more and more interesting character. The book begins with Archer finding a fatally shot man on the side of a road. Archer wants to find out who killed him. More accurately, Archer NEEDS to find out who killed him. At some point, another character pays him a nominal fee for his troubles but that's clearly not what is driving Archer here.
The development of Archer as a character reminds me of how "Law and Order" used to give out little snippets of the lawyers private lives and their history on that show. Just enough to leave you wanting more. Here, we find out more about his prior marriage and divorce but also that he was a WWII veteran and that he is still dealing with all of those issues.
On a side note, I think I figured out another reason I love these detective/noir stories so much. Inevitably, during the moments of the most tension or danger, Archer likes to undermine those emotions with a non sequitur, joke, or rye observation. I find this is exactly the way that I deal with any sort of stress or tension in my life as well and that is why I find the rhythms of these stories so pleasing on such a base level.
Well, enough of my navel gazing. This is another great addition to the series and I recommend it highly.
As always with Macdonald's books, there are many great quotes:
"Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour."
"There were no chairs in the room. I sat on the bed. Love or something like it had broken its back."
"You don't even know you exist unless a woman whispers it in your ear. Any woman."
"I wouldn't throw words like 'crazy' around. They can boomerang."
"A thousand feet below, it was still burning brightly. Among the faint far odors of burning oil and alcohol I could smell Okinawa again." (The first reference to his war days that I could remember)
"I think will is just another name for desire. In the long run you can't force yourself to will what you don't desire. Or stay away from the things you really want."
As this series goes on Archer becomes a more and more interesting character. The book begins with Archer finding a fatally shot man on the side of a road. Archer wants to find out who killed him. More accurately, Archer NEEDS to find out who killed him. At some point, another character pays him a nominal fee for his troubles but that's clearly not what is driving Archer here.
The development of Archer as a character reminds me of how "Law and Order" used to give out little snippets of the lawyers private lives and their history on that show. Just enough to leave you wanting more. Here, we find out more about his prior marriage and divorce but also that he was a WWII veteran and that he is still dealing with all of those issues.
On a side note, I think I figured out another reason I love these detective/noir stories so much. Inevitably, during the moments of the most tension or danger, Archer likes to undermine those emotions with a non sequitur, joke, or rye observation. I find this is exactly the way that I deal with any sort of stress or tension in my life as well and that is why I find the rhythms of these stories so pleasing on such a base level.
Well, enough of my navel gazing. This is another great addition to the series and I recommend it highly.
As always with Macdonald's books, there are many great quotes:
"Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour."
"There were no chairs in the room. I sat on the bed. Love or something like it had broken its back."
"You don't even know you exist unless a woman whispers it in your ear. Any woman."
"I wouldn't throw words like 'crazy' around. They can boomerang."
"A thousand feet below, it was still burning brightly. Among the faint far odors of burning oil and alcohol I could smell Okinawa again." (The first reference to his war days that I could remember)
"I think will is just another name for desire. In the long run you can't force yourself to will what you don't desire. Or stay away from the things you really want."
April 2, 2020
This series has hit its stride in this, the fifth book. It is a tightly woven and nicely paced rollercoaster of a ride, plus we get some insight into Lew Archer's past: he was a petty thief as a kid; only a chance encounter with a plainclothesman altered his path. We already knew he'd served some time as an officer on the police force before going private, but here we also get some flashbacks to Okinawa, indicating that Archer served in the Pacific theatre in WWII.
These experiences add nuance to his character, and help us understand his logic, how he moves from one fact to another as he gathers his case together to figure out whodunit. In this particular case, Archer picks up a nearly-dead "hitchhiker" (if one can really call the poor guy that - it seems he basically used the last of his strength to lift part of his body into the air, but presumably it was to catch someone's attention on the desolate highway where he'd been dumped) and takes him to the first place he can find with a phone. Turns out its Kerrigan's Motor Court, and the owner has some history with the victim. Archer realizes that he's being sidetracked from his original journey (to deliver evidence that's locked in the trunk of his car to the state authorities) and settles in as a witness, but the mysterious disappearance of the motel's manager piques his interest, and off he dives, into a deep and tangled web of jealousy, crime, and double/triple-crossing comrades in arms.
I really relished this read as pure crime noir, and I'm glad that I've stuck with this series. I'm very intrigued by the bits and pieces we're learning about Archer, and I like the way he goes about solving his cases. The only downsides to spending time in his head are (1) he is obsessed with women's breasts, and (2) he gets knocked out during fistfights quite a bit. We're only in Book #5 and if Archer was a real person he'd have so many TBIs that he'd probably have permanent personality changes and/or memory loss.
These experiences add nuance to his character, and help us understand his logic, how he moves from one fact to another as he gathers his case together to figure out whodunit. In this particular case, Archer picks up a nearly-dead "hitchhiker" (if one can really call the poor guy that - it seems he basically used the last of his strength to lift part of his body into the air, but presumably it was to catch someone's attention on the desolate highway where he'd been dumped) and takes him to the first place he can find with a phone. Turns out its Kerrigan's Motor Court, and the owner has some history with the victim. Archer realizes that he's being sidetracked from his original journey (to deliver evidence that's locked in the trunk of his car to the state authorities) and settles in as a witness, but the mysterious disappearance of the motel's manager piques his interest, and off he dives, into a deep and tangled web of jealousy, crime, and double/triple-crossing comrades in arms.
I really relished this read as pure crime noir, and I'm glad that I've stuck with this series. I'm very intrigued by the bits and pieces we're learning about Archer, and I like the way he goes about solving his cases. The only downsides to spending time in his head are (1) he is obsessed with women's breasts, and (2) he gets knocked out during fistfights quite a bit. We're only in Book #5 and if Archer was a real person he'd have so many TBIs that he'd probably have permanent personality changes and/or memory loss.
November 23, 2022
Find A Victim (1954), a re-read for me, is possibly the most violent Lew Archer of the whole series...Three murders, another two during a shootout, Archer gets in a number of fights; he kicks some ass, and gets his ass kicked in return. Lot's of angry people through-out....yes, Victim is violent and full of tension...Having said that Victim lands in the lower third of the Archer series. Driving to Sacramento Archer finds a dying man on the side of the highway which leads to a unexpected case in the town of Las Cruces. The story develops well enough but I'd say after the roller-coaster of a ride the ending falls a little flat....For the Ross Macdonald completest...3 outta 5...
May 6, 2016
"The sky turned lime-white all along its edges, then flared in jukebox colors. The sun appeared in my rearview mirror like a sudden bright coin ejected from a machine. The chameleon desert mocked the sky, and the joshua trees leaned crazily into the rushing dawn."
Find a Victim (1954) is the fifth novel in the Archer series (I am still in the author's early period in my "Re-read Ross Macdonald" project). The plot takes us to central California, to the fictional city of Las Cruces, which would be situated somewhere in the area between Bakersfield and Fresno, not far from the west slopes of the Sierra Nevada range. One of the last scenes happens on the Nevada border, in the desolate regions northeast of Death Valley. Find a Victim might be the only novel in the series where the geography of California plays some role.
Archer is driving from Los Angeles to Sacramento and we later learn that he is carrying a load of several hundred marijuana cigarettes (one needs to read the novel to find out how it is possible that his delivery is fully legal in those supposedly "clean" times of the early 1950s). On his way - as promised by the title - he finds a victim, a man who has been shot and left to die in a ditch. Archer arranges help and accompanies the dying man to the hospital. But the help is too late and Archer stays in Las Cruces to assist in solving the murder, partly because he feels he owes this to the man whom he almost saved and partly because he gets interested in some people met there.
Las Cruces is a provincial town where everybody knows everybody else and where most families are connected in some way, by birth, marriage, business, corruption, or crime. While the local sheriff distrusts Archer and wants him out, Archer has reasons to suspect that the sheriff himself is involved in crime activities. The sheriff's sister-in-law disappears, further murders happen, and the plot gets more complicated although not as much as in some later novels by Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald's real name).
The best aspect of the novel is the author's ability to convey the sense of place and his wonderful prose portraying the country of Sierra Nevada's west slopes and the bleak and barren landscapes of the desert terrain near the California-Nevada border. I have been traveling a lot in those places during the last 33 years, and I easily recognize the characteristic vistas described by the author. Like Archer over 60 years ago, I also stop in Barstow for lunch and in Baker for coffee and I also love the uncharted backroads in the desert.
Yet Find a Victim is not one of the better books in the Archer series. I have little right to criticize a great writer, but I think that in this novel the plot drives the characterizations, and - perhaps except for Archer - the people in the book do not feel real. Moreover, several passages are highly implausible; particularly the very long conversation between two central characters, overheard in its entirety by Archer, reads like a cheap trick.
Two and a half stars, rounded down.
Find a Victim (1954) is the fifth novel in the Archer series (I am still in the author's early period in my "Re-read Ross Macdonald" project). The plot takes us to central California, to the fictional city of Las Cruces, which would be situated somewhere in the area between Bakersfield and Fresno, not far from the west slopes of the Sierra Nevada range. One of the last scenes happens on the Nevada border, in the desolate regions northeast of Death Valley. Find a Victim might be the only novel in the series where the geography of California plays some role.
Archer is driving from Los Angeles to Sacramento and we later learn that he is carrying a load of several hundred marijuana cigarettes (one needs to read the novel to find out how it is possible that his delivery is fully legal in those supposedly "clean" times of the early 1950s). On his way - as promised by the title - he finds a victim, a man who has been shot and left to die in a ditch. Archer arranges help and accompanies the dying man to the hospital. But the help is too late and Archer stays in Las Cruces to assist in solving the murder, partly because he feels he owes this to the man whom he almost saved and partly because he gets interested in some people met there.
Las Cruces is a provincial town where everybody knows everybody else and where most families are connected in some way, by birth, marriage, business, corruption, or crime. While the local sheriff distrusts Archer and wants him out, Archer has reasons to suspect that the sheriff himself is involved in crime activities. The sheriff's sister-in-law disappears, further murders happen, and the plot gets more complicated although not as much as in some later novels by Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald's real name).
The best aspect of the novel is the author's ability to convey the sense of place and his wonderful prose portraying the country of Sierra Nevada's west slopes and the bleak and barren landscapes of the desert terrain near the California-Nevada border. I have been traveling a lot in those places during the last 33 years, and I easily recognize the characteristic vistas described by the author. Like Archer over 60 years ago, I also stop in Barstow for lunch and in Baker for coffee and I also love the uncharted backroads in the desert.
Yet Find a Victim is not one of the better books in the Archer series. I have little right to criticize a great writer, but I think that in this novel the plot drives the characterizations, and - perhaps except for Archer - the people in the book do not feel real. Moreover, several passages are highly implausible; particularly the very long conversation between two central characters, overheard in its entirety by Archer, reads like a cheap trick.
Two and a half stars, rounded down.
May 5, 2019
As a private detective Lew Archer is used to cases coming to him. But when he encounters a dying man on the side of the highway between Los Angeles and Sacramento, he quickly finds himself enmeshed in the investigation of a hijacked shipment of bourbon, the question of a missing woman, and the hostile relationship between a local businessman and the county sheriff. As corpses start to pile up, Archer must untangle the threads before more people die � with his own body possibly among them.
As the fifth book published in his Lew Archer series, Ross Macdonald's novel offers a nice mix of the fresh and the familiar. By this point he was increasingly focused on the elements that made his books so great, namely the characters revealed by his protagonist's investigations. Yet Macdonald starts the novel in a way unusual with his books, as he drops Archer into the middle of events, giving him a need to find a justification to stay with the case and see it through. The amount of effort this entails for his central character provided for a nice change of pace from his other works, and shows how willing Macdonald was to tweak with his formula to produce yet another engrossing tale of temptation and murder in postwar America.
As the fifth book published in his Lew Archer series, Ross Macdonald's novel offers a nice mix of the fresh and the familiar. By this point he was increasingly focused on the elements that made his books so great, namely the characters revealed by his protagonist's investigations. Yet Macdonald starts the novel in a way unusual with his books, as he drops Archer into the middle of events, giving him a need to find a justification to stay with the case and see it through. The amount of effort this entails for his central character provided for a nice change of pace from his other works, and shows how willing Macdonald was to tweak with his formula to produce yet another engrossing tale of temptation and murder in postwar America.
May 3, 2020
“I could see the thoughts cross her eyes like the shadows of unknown creatures.�
Masterly hard-boiled language without the melodrama and testosterone overload of a Spillane novel. My first Lew Archer novel and I enjoyed it immensely. There’s more than one memorable line here.
Masterly hard-boiled language without the melodrama and testosterone overload of a Spillane novel. My first Lew Archer novel and I enjoyed it immensely. There’s more than one memorable line here.
September 10, 2022
Winds around in a lessening circle to a good, old-fashioned ‘proper� end. Humorous: “A blue jay jeered at me � I told him to keep a civil tongue in his mouth.� Clean, interesting, and well narrated by one of the best.
January 30, 2025
Listened to the audiobook.
As most Lew Archer novels do, this one begins with a single victim, in this case, a murder victim, that opens the story into a broad cast of characters and plots as broad as the Southern California landscape.
As detective Lew Archer seeks to solve the murder of a Mexican migrant worker he found and helped off the side of the road, he soon finds himself collecting his $100 per day (plus expenses) searching for a missing girl in towns and cultures left behind through the influence of the automobile and the rise of the atomic age.
Filled with quore-worthy lines and bland, every day people with extraordinary problems, Find a Victim was worth the read. Or, in my case, the listen.
As most Lew Archer novels do, this one begins with a single victim, in this case, a murder victim, that opens the story into a broad cast of characters and plots as broad as the Southern California landscape.
As detective Lew Archer seeks to solve the murder of a Mexican migrant worker he found and helped off the side of the road, he soon finds himself collecting his $100 per day (plus expenses) searching for a missing girl in towns and cultures left behind through the influence of the automobile and the rise of the atomic age.
Filled with quore-worthy lines and bland, every day people with extraordinary problems, Find a Victim was worth the read. Or, in my case, the listen.
July 31, 2021
La historia no es nada original , pero está muy bien escrito, con algunos momentos incluso brillantes y es muy entretenido , aunque resulta lioso porque se olvidan las relaciones familiares entre los personajes (quien es hermana o nieta de quién). Después de varios giros de guión, en las últimas 15 páginas se resume todo y se aclara el porqué de los asesinatos, esto, aunque un poco repetitivo, viene muy bien para rematar la novela.
April 14, 2022
Not as good as I thought judging from the reviews.
July 20, 2020
This had two great things going for it, from my personal vantage. First was the great way Macdonald crafts a story, the personality of Archer, and the creation of a city-setting as a character itself. Okay, maybe those are more than one thing. But in this series, they are virtual certainties. Macdonald never misses the beat on those.
The novel chugged along and I was helpless to slow the urge to read. By the halfway point in the book, I was planning ahead, making sure I could continue reading until I finished.
And as the end approached, the second thing that made this book great for me crystallized. All the characters' flaws seemed to point to something in me, or in people close to me, or people I disliked. Even the least of Macdonald's novels are very good. The best are great because, despite the window dressings of genre, the characters seem utterly real.
Or maybe that's just because my life has been such that they remind me of people I know and have known.
The novel chugged along and I was helpless to slow the urge to read. By the halfway point in the book, I was planning ahead, making sure I could continue reading until I finished.
And as the end approached, the second thing that made this book great for me crystallized. All the characters' flaws seemed to point to something in me, or in people close to me, or people I disliked. Even the least of Macdonald's novels are very good. The best are great because, despite the window dressings of genre, the characters seem utterly real.
Or maybe that's just because my life has been such that they remind me of people I know and have known.
April 24, 2017
Getting better with each book. More action. Better action. Less explication at the end. Scenery for background, not to look seedy. Real psychology if amateur. Still some loose ends as you go - not the ideal detective story yet. Much more sense of Archer as a real person.
April 27, 2023
The book opens with Archer, a man who investigates murders, just stumbling across a murder. Once you get past that improbability though, this is another excellent, taut and weaving mystery.
January 18, 2021
I'm a huge enough fan of Ross Macdonald to be able to say that while there's no doubt he's probably the greatest American mystery writer of all time, I don't actually think he's all that great of a crime writer per se -- by which I mean every time one of his books involves the mob or drugs or street toughs with guns, it comes out a lot more dated and embarrassing than his masterfully crafted psychological whodunits set among the elite milieu.
Find a Victim is without a doubt the most successful I think Macdonald has ever been in approaching the true hardboiled mode, but what's more impressive is that he does so by almost imperceptively weaving an old-fashioned Hammett-esque story of hijacking and gangsters in a crooked desert town with the depthful psychological fare that predates his later magnum opuses.
His writing, too, is probably the best its ever been in this book -- Macdonald as an actual prose stylist I can actually kind of just take or leave (most of the time he leans between trying to hard to emulate Chandler and trying too hard to emulate F. Scott Fitzgerald), but this book has some of the most graceful, unstrained turns of phrase and effortless writing I think I've ever read in a Macdonald book. It was a real pleasure from start to finish; a brief and sometimes pulpy rural crime story with great twists and really well-drawn, constantly surprising characters.
Find a Victim is without a doubt the most successful I think Macdonald has ever been in approaching the true hardboiled mode, but what's more impressive is that he does so by almost imperceptively weaving an old-fashioned Hammett-esque story of hijacking and gangsters in a crooked desert town with the depthful psychological fare that predates his later magnum opuses.
His writing, too, is probably the best its ever been in this book -- Macdonald as an actual prose stylist I can actually kind of just take or leave (most of the time he leans between trying to hard to emulate Chandler and trying too hard to emulate F. Scott Fitzgerald), but this book has some of the most graceful, unstrained turns of phrase and effortless writing I think I've ever read in a Macdonald book. It was a real pleasure from start to finish; a brief and sometimes pulpy rural crime story with great twists and really well-drawn, constantly surprising characters.
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