Windows To The World

THE CHILL

Ross MacDonald

In Ross MacDonald's  twelfth Lew Archer  Southern California adventure an anxious, angry young man hires the PI to find his wife. Alex Kincaid married Dolly after a whirlwind 6 week romance. The day after the wedding an older man visits Dolly and she then takes off for destinations unknown. Alex is being discouraged from looking for her by his father but he thinks he needs to stick by her which is the only mature thing Alex seems to have done.

Southern California coast

It does not take Archer long to find Dolly, but when she brought back to Alex it is apparent that she is in the midst of a mental breakdown. This has been precipitated by her discovery of a murdered woman who was a friend, counselor, and teacher for the past several months. This is Helen Haggerty who is a professor at a local college.  Archer knows Helen because she had recently tried to vamp him, but instead begged him to  be her protector because she had been receiving threats to her life. To Archer's sorrow he turned her down, not quite believing the danger to be real.


Archer believes Helen's murder to be tied to her past and he questions whether some of the ghosts of Dolly's past which are part of her mental instability are not connected in some way to Helen's past. He sees his job to now protect Dolly because the police would like to close the case and put Dolly in the hot seat.


Following his instincts, Archers proceeds to untangle all the threads which seem to obscuring the real picture. One thread that seems to connect to many of the characters is a melancholy Dean of the college George Roy Bradshaw. Most of the female characters are not particularly likeable but the mystery revolves around who and what the women really are. A character that weaves itself through out the book is a pea souper fog that helps to obscure the landscape and blinds Archer every so often.


Lew is philosophical in his work and in his life. He says

 "sat on a bench at a bus stop, and read my new book about Heraclitus. All things flow like a river, he said; nothing abides. Parmenides, on the other hand, believed that nothing ever changed, it only seemed to. Both views appealed to me." 

Ross MacDonald has a wonderful way with words avoiding Hackneyed phrases and uses descriptions artfully as he paints  the picture of a young man: a man of half-qualities who lived in a half world: he was half-handsome, half-lost, half-spoiled, half-smart, half-dangerous. His pointed Italian shoes were scuffed at the toes. Lew half-believes what the fellow has to tell him.

The author injects the troubling aspects of his own troubled life into his works disguised faintly, filling his stories with children as lost as he was and adults scarred by present torments and past regrets.

Ross MacDonald

I was impressed by the Vintage Crime/Black Lizard publication. It was a soft  flexible cover in a good size and seductive to hold.