Books of 1952: The Ivory Grin by Ross Macdonald

Rich Westwood at his blog Past Offences (classic crime reviews and news) has challenged readers to blog about a book or movie from 1952 during the month of August. This review of The Ivory Grin by Ross Macdonald is my submission for the 1952 book challenge.

Short summary from this review at armchairinterviews.com.:

Archer is hired by the archetypal mystery client who won’t tell him anything about herself, to find a young woman she won’t tell him much about either. Archer knows from the first moments that he is being conned, but he’s both a little short on cash and a romantic at heart, and he just can’t resist the challenge that goes with the $100.

The book starts with a scene in Lew Archer's office, introducing the client:

I found her waiting at the door of my office. She was a stocky woman of less than medium height, wearing a blue slack suit over a blue turtleneck sweater, and a blue mink stole that failed to soften her outlines. Her face was squarish and deeply tanned, its boyish quality confirmed by dark hair cut short at the nape. She wasn't the type you'd expect to be up and about at eight thirty in the morning, unless she'd been up all night. As I unlocked the door she stood back and looked up at me with the air of an early bird surveying an outsize worm.

Archer finds her behavior very irritating very quickly but finds the $100 for two days' work that she is offering hard to pass up.

Her hard dry glance went over me almost tangibly and rested on my mouth. "You look all right. But you sound kind of Hollywood to me."

I was in no mood to swap compliments. The ragged edge on her voice, and her alternation of fair and bad manners bothered me. It was like talking to several persons at once, none of them quite complete.

As with Raymond Chandler, it is the style of writing that I enjoyed the most. The plot was very complex, and I got lost more than once. The characters are well-drawn, but I did get confused occasionally. I did not guess the resolution to the story, and I thought it was handled well. I don't expect to be able to figure out the plots, but I usually do try, without really meaning to.

The young woman who Lew Archer is seeking is a black woman, but light-skinned enough to have passed for white at times. It was good to read a vintage mystery which handles race relations evenhandedly. There are several black characters, their story is followed throughout the novel, and the characters are portrayed compassionately. This story also contrasts between those who have wealth (or want it badly) and those who are closer to poverty.

I recently read Hardboiled America by Geoffrey O'Brien. That book points out that...

With Lew Archer himself, Macdonald pulls off the neat trick of creating a character largely by negative means. Try to imagine him apart from the structure of the book and he becomes a cipher. We see through Archer's eyes, and react with him, but in the end he is little more than a window through which we perceive the real figures of interest — the people who Archer is investigating. He is the interviewer, the neutral voice that calmly elicits anguished testimony. On one level, he is a brilliant dramatic device, a device that works because of Macdonald's mastery of dialogue.

Possibly this is why I was uncomfortable with the story. I wasn't sure why Archer was continuing his investigation against all odds and with little obvious motivation, other than he felt he had to do the right thing for the people he was now involved with.

A reviewer at Goodreads starts his review of this book thusly:

This, the fourth novel in the Lew Archer series, is very good but not exceptional (at least not according to the standards of this exceptional series).

I hope this is true because I did like this book but was not overwhelmed by his skills, and I want to like his other books. I like the reviewer's comments so I recommend that you go read the whole review.

I have a problem when first reading the icons of mystery; my expectations are too high. I want to be bowled over with brilliance, and if that does not happen, I am disappointed. Often, when I come back to another book by the same author, I enjoy it much more because I now know what to expect.  This book is a fine book, but I was expecting more.

I think I will read The Moving Target next, which is the first book in the series and has been adapted into a film starring Paul Newman, titled Harper. I will re-watch that movie after reading the book.

The author's real name was Kenneth Millar and he was married to crime novelist Margaret Millar. They lived for a while in Santa Barbara, California, although both also lived in Canada when younger.

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Publisher: Bantam Books, 1984 (orig. pub. by Alfred A. Knopf, 1952)
Length:  249 pages
Format: paperback
Series:  Lew Archer novels, #4
Setting: Los Angeles, California and surrounding areas
Genre:  Mystery
Source: purchased my copy