The Underground Man (Penguin Modern Classics) [Paperback]

The Underground Man by Ross Macdonald

Penguin are re-releasing five of the works of Ross Macdonald in their Modern Classics series, thus alerting a new generation of readers to a treasure trove of American thrillers, written with a literary artistry which has all but vanished from the genre in recent years.

Don't equate artistry with flaccidity. Macdonald's tales are hardboiled, his characters strongly and sharply drawn, their conflicts hot-blooded.

But he writes about them with such skill that a character is impaled by a few words, a mood is captured, an emotion defined, an action frozen. For example:

"He nodded, then he cried. He nodded and cried, nodded and cried like a human pump."

"As she looked at me her eyes misted over like cold windows."

"She was pretty enough to make me conscious that I hadn't shaved."

"She went into deep thought. It sat prettily on her, softening the anxious angularity of her posture."

"He felt resentful and betrayed like a sailor who has come to the edge of a flat world."

Macdonald's private eye is Lew Archer. He is a lonely man, emotionally scarred but enduringly sensitive to others' hurt. He is an engaging and endearing figure.

The Underground Man deals with the abduction of a young boy, murder, betrayal, envy, the arrogance of the monied, the despair of the abandoned. In other words, what happens to people.

As the eminent critic Malcolm Forbes has observed: "Macdonald matters because of his ability to accurately depict the dire and dastardly things humankind does to itself and infuse them with a glorious poetic sensibility."

I relished Lew Archer when I first encountered him as the series ran to 1976 and I read him now with the warmth and intensified appreciation of one who meets a well loved friend after a long hiatus. In fact, as I read, the plot becomes subservient to the anticipation of the next verbal grenade to detonate with elucidation, or the phrase with resonates with insight.

Of course, when you enter Macdonald's America of the 1970s it's a trifle startling to find that marriage matters and a dollar tip is generous. It is startling in a different way to encounter conversation which is lucid, courteous yet vibrant. Yet the human tensions his novels depict with such flair and empathy are timeless and universal.

*Ross Macdonald is a pen name for Kenneth Millar who was born in California in 1915 and educated in Canada and at the University of Michigan where he also taught. He published his first novel The Dark Tunnel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was given their Grand Master Award as well as achieving the Mystery Writers of Great Britain's Silver Dagger Award. He died in 1983. -- Prospero.

Rating: Five distinguished stars

Lew Archer, PI, almost accidentally becomes involved in the search for a young boy he had befriended earlier. The boy's father is murdered shortly thereafter and Lew is soon investigating much more, including the disappearance of the boy's grandfather many years ago.

This is a good private detective story featuring Lew who appears in a great number of Ross Macdonald books. The novel is quite old so we don't have technology helping to solve the mysteries. We also don't have any profanity, gore or sex. We do, however, have a good whodunit which keeps the reader engaged as Lew goes about his work. There are no silly plot elements holding the story together either. I found some parts slow-going and I did lose track of some of the characters at times though.

These minor quibbles aside, this was a solid and intriguing mystery featuring a likeable PI.

The Underground Man is number one on my list together with White Butterfly (written by Walter Mosley ). And I have read over hundred novels (mostly detective novels ) in english. Ross Macdonald understands life, human beings and family problems. I have read The Underground Man in 1992 and I want read it again. I can also recommend other novel(written by Ross Macdonald ): The Chill is absolutely worth reading.