![]() ![]() He encounters an angry young man called George Wall at the gate – the action kicking in almost before the end of the first page – and once he’s inside the building the club manager, Clarence Bassett, explains what the disturbance is all about. ![]() The novel opens with Lew being called to The Channel Club, a private building at the southern end of Malibu beach. He also has a heart of gold, naturally, but after so many years of being dragged through the mud it’s tarnished a little. In many ways Macdonald’s Lew Archer is the archetypal private eye, quick tongued and always struggling to stay on the right side of the law. ![]() It’s dark, dangerous, and the flip side of the American dream. It’s the world that Roman Polanski portrayed so realistically in Chinatown, or that James Ellroy still plunders to this day. If you haven’t stepped inside this noir-ish world before then here’s a brief rundown of what to expect: hot-headed gangsters, scheming women, smart-talking detectives, guns, seedy motels, under-the-table business deals and more than one murder. Punctuated by a sharp, dark wit, and twisting subtly through an untold number of well-plotted revelations, this novel shows why Macdonald was considered the natural successor to the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Originally published in 1956, as the sixth novel in the Lew Archer crime series, The Barbarous Coast demonstrates exactly why Ross Macdonald’s name has survived when so many others have been forgotten. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |