The Galton Case by Ross Macdonald

The Galton Case by Ross Macdonald

 

published 1959

 

[excerpt – Lew Archer visits a bar/club]

The Listening Ear was full of dark blue light and pale blue music. A combo made up of piano, bass fiddle, trumpet, and drums was playing something advanced. I didn’t have my slide rule with me, but the four musicians seemed to understand each other. From time to time they smiled and nodded like space jockeys passing in the night. The man at the piano seemed to be the head technician. He smiled more distantly than the others, and when the melody had been done to death, he took the applause with more exquisite remoteness. Then he bent over his keyboard again like a mad scientist.

 

comments: I was talking recently about Annoying Detectives and many people were wondering about the opposite, the favourites. And Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer is very much the antithesis, he is one of the least annoying detectives there is.

Mind you, Archer changes during the series, and so does the moral framework. In the early books he is quite violent, a tough guy, not particularly nice, and not really thinking about the effects of what he’s doing. In those books he is always being knocked out, and picking fights – not later on. And I like to say: in the early books you would NOT trust him with your daughter, later he’s the man you would want looking after her. He is almost gentle – tough when he needs to be, but he doesn’t start it.

When I appeared on the Tipping my Fedora podcast recently, Sergio Angelini and I discussed all aspects of Macdonald at length – so if you want more you know where to go.

Tipping my Fedora – Ross Macdonald

This particular book is agreed to be the turning point – where Archer and/or MacDonald becomes a serious player, a literary character, someone with stories to tell who stands out from the competition. He is about to go into a run of books which are startling, and startlingly good

8. The Galton Case (1959)
   9. The Wycherly Woman (1961)
   10. The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962)
   11. The Chill (1964)
   12. The Far Side of the Dollar (1965)
   13. Black Money (1966)
   14. The Instant Enemy (1968)
   15. The Goodbye Look (1969)
   16. The Underground Man (1971)
   17. Sleeping Beauty (1973)
   18. The Blue Hammer (1976)

 

It seems there is a reason for that –The Galton Case has the very Macdonald-esque features of impersonation, lost sons, inheritance, miserable childhoods. It is grim but well-done. And apparently Ross had fought and struggled with the story, because it used elements from his own childhood – abandoned by his father, a mother struggling, constant moves and no money. The author tried many ways to write it, including having the boy as a first-person narrator before finally - and grudgingly – accepting that it was an Archer book and must be written as such. So perhaps he worked his way through his haunted past. He couldn’t then forget it, and elements of it appear in most of his books, but maye he had found a way to cope with it.

This is one complex plot: I might recommend you look at the Wikipedia page for it – which, warning,  fully spoilers. But - I’ve read the book twice in the past 18 months or so, and I still could make very little of the description of the plot there. I think you just have to give yourself over to the book.

Not many clothes in this one:

A pretty blond woman about half his age emerged from behind a banana tree in the court. She was wearing jeans and an open-necked white shirt. She moved with a kind of clumsy stealth, like somebody stepping out of an ambush.

(Note that in UK English usage, this would be blonde-with-an-e)

And there is also this excruciating father/daughter exchange:

The doe-eyed girl from the badminton court appeared in the doorway behind him. Her body was like ripening fruit, only partly concealed by her sleeveless jersey and rolled shorts. She glowed with healthy beauty, but her mouth was impatient: ‘Daddy? How much longer?’

The color on his cheekbones heightened when he saw her. ‘Roll down your pants, Sheila.’

‘They’re not pants.’

‘Whatever they are, roll them down.’

‘Why should I?’

 ‘Because I’m telling you to.’

 ‘You could at least tell me in private.’

 

We know a lot about Macdonald’s private life, along with his wife, Margaret Millar, and they had endless troubles with their daughter Linda. The simplistic view might be that the wayward sons are Ross himself, the difficult daughters his own, but it feels uncomfortable to get too biographical.

And at least – impersonation is a safe topic, and always a favourite round here.There are definite similarities with the Tichborne Case, featured in two different blogposts

Impersonation in books

Impersonation: The Belting Inheritance by Julian Symons

To find other Macdonald books, or those of Margaret Millar, use the tags below.

Top picture from William P Gottlieb’s wonderful collection of photos of nightclubs and jazz singers at the Library of Congress.

[Portrait of Jimmy Crawford, New York, N.Y., between 1946 … | Flickr

 

Vivat Vintage girl in shorts