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The Galton Case (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Ross Macdonald
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Ross Macdonald is best known as the creator of the Lew Archer series.
The Galton Case (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Ross Macdonald is available. Click for more info or to buy it now.
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Related Links at MysteryNet.com
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The Galton Case (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Ross Macdonald
Features
Paperback:
256 pages
; Dimensions (in inches): 0.54 x 7.99 x 5.20
Publisher: Vintage Books; Reprint edition (December 1996)
ISBN:
0679768645
Amazon.com
The Galton Case, published in 1959, was Ross Macdonald's breakthrough book. Its predecessors are craftsmanlike, highly literate, hard-boiled detective stories; The Galton Case and most of its successors are literature that happens to inhabit the detective-story form. For Macdonald the man, Galton was the first book in which he explored his deepest personal concerns (he was the child of a broken home who was passed from relative to relative in his youth). For readers, it's the book in which he first perfected the balancing act that became his trademark: a tightly written page-turner that also probes profound themes and frequently rises to something like poetry. The tale opens with detective Lew Archer visiting the swanky offices of a lawyer acquaintance, who engages him to hunt for a long-missing scion of the rich Galton family. Though the case seems fruitless, Archer begins digging. Soon a seemingly unrelated crime intrudes--but Archer tells us, "I hate coincidences." As he roams California (and, briefly, Nevada) following leads and hunches, he gradually uncovers a long-buried tale of deception, hatred, and the power of illusion. As usual, Macdonald can accomplish more with three lines of dialogue and a simple description than most writers can in three pages. The connection between Archer's two cases finally clicks about three-quarters of the way through the book, and the moving denouement, with its final plot twist, takes place in a hardscrabble Canadian boarding house much like those in which Macdonald spent parts of his childhood. The Galton Case is an exceptionally satisfying read on several levels. --Nicholas H. Allison
Book Description
Anthony Galton disappeared almost 20 years ago. Now his aging--and very rich--mother has hired Lew Archer to bring him back. What turns up is a headless skeleton, a suspicious heir, and a con man whose stakes are so high that someone is still willing to kill for them.
Reader Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Possibly, the ultimate Ross Macdonald novel, July 7, 2003
Reviewer:
Neal Clark Reynolds
from E. Taunton, MA United States
Fairly new to Ross MacDonald, I am finding his books superb dramatic novels told as mysteries...the pieces of the poignant story are given to you jigsaw style, but you still experience the power of the story as they are pieced together. Lew Archer's role is that of the puzzle solver, and you are not as involved with him and his character development as you are with the characters. This is possibly his most satisfying story and like most of the other reviewers, I choose to let you discover the story for yourself. If you have read previous MacDonald, you may spot elements of the story before they're completely revealed, but this hardly will diminish your enjoyment of the book. It might even enhance it. There's much more of interest here than just the identity of the murderer. There's a lot of figuring out the essences of the people involved, and they do act consistently. There is one minor stretch of credibility in this particular book, one rather unlikely coincidence, but it's a realistic coincidence, one which fits nicely as one of the coincidences that do occur in real life and does not seem like the author's contrivance. I don't think it makes any appreciable difference whether or not you've read any other MacDonald works or not. This will read well as the first one or the later one. One of the great mystery novels, for sure.
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