The Ivory Grin A Lew Archer Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Ross Macdonald Grover Gardner Inc Blackstone Audio Books
Download As PDF : The Ivory Grin A Lew Archer Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Ross Macdonald Grover Gardner Inc Blackstone Audio Books
If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantel of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.
A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he's being fed a line, but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts the case. He tracks the wayward maid to a ramshackle motel in a seedy, run-down small town, but finds her dead in her tiny room, with her throat slit from ear to ear. Archer digs deeper into the case and discovers a web of deceit and intrigue, with crazed number-runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls, and a golden-boy shipping heir who's gone mysteriously missing.
The Ivory Grin A Lew Archer Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Ross Macdonald Grover Gardner Inc Blackstone Audio Books
This is easily one of the best Lew Archer novels, although I give the edge to The Way Some People Die and The Galton Case: A Lew Archer Novel. Like those novels, this one has a surprising number of elements, very evocative of postwar California. The Ivory Grin goes beyond noir into the macabre:... Two pale hands sprang out from his dark silhouette and gripped the bars framing his face. He swayed from side to side, and I saw the white blaze on one side of his tangled head. His shoulders writhed. He seemed to be trying to wrench the bars out of their concrete sockets. Each time he tried and failed, he said one word in a low growling guttural. “Hell,” he said. “Hell. Hell.” The word fell heavily from his mouth forty or fifty times while his body tugged and heaved, flinging itself violently from side to side. He left the window then, as suddenly as he had appeared in it. I watched his slow shadow retreat across the ceiling and dissolve out of human shape.
Re-reading it, wondering why it didn't make the cut in the Library of America (it is far better than THE DOOMSTERS), I did notice some very 'writerly' similes and descriptions. A more experienced writer can do more with less. The final chapters, however, are so satisfying and well-written- a virtual descent into the Hell foreshadowed in the passage quoted above- that I was willing to forgive Macdonald all minor flaws. That extremely corny, intentionally corny line, "This is the payoff, Wionowski," is so startling in context, and yet so well prepared by the entire book (we are dealing with the Purple Gang, for crying out loud) that I lost all doubt. This is a great book.
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The Ivory Grin A Lew Archer Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Ross Macdonald Grover Gardner Inc Blackstone Audio Books Reviews
Ross MacDonald really captures the Noir fifties well. It's almost a Historical Novel because it was actually written back then.
I had heard alot about his books. Finally read the CHILL. It was just ok. But the IVORY GRIN is excellent. Highly recommend it.
MacDonald is moving Archer into his own in this book, continuing to flesh the character out and away from the shadows of Marlowe and Spade. I'm really enjoying the series thus far.
MacDonald is great
This 1952 Lew Archer detective novel by Ross Macdonald is suspenseful and unfolds in the space of two days. Even for a work this early, the settings (exurban and small-town California) and concerns (which include racism, class conflict and mental illness) are hallmarks of Macdonald. The crisp pacing is satisfying, but frequently new characters are introduced -- and old ones reappear -- in too metronomic a fashion. Sometimes the tough-guy similes -- "His uncombed hair was a fringe of withering grass around the pink desert of his scalp"; "Lights shone like wit in a dowager behind the windows of the Palladian villa" betray an overreliance on the Raymond Chandler approach that Macdonald would move away from later in the decade. THE IVORY GRIN is a good book, but there are better to come.
In this early (1952) Lew Archer mystery, author Ross Macdonald does a great job of storytelling. The descriptive passages are original and highly evocative, the dialogue is first rate and the intricate plotting is very compelling. Macdonald introduces a number of interesting, realistically crafted characters from many different walks of life and masterfully weaves their individual stories together to create a literary tapestry that is quite satisfying.
The Ivory Grin is a remarkable example of detective fiction. Its two greatest strengths are the vividness with which the characters are drawn and the precision with which the multiple plot threads blend together. Highly recommended.
There's Hammett, there's Chandler, and then there's MacDonald. Ross MacDonald. Of the three he composed the most elegant and baffling plots all the while keeping the hard-boiled tradition alive. I re-read his books frequently and am surprised by each one all over again. If you love hard-boiled detective fiction, and you've never read Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer, you're missing the Third Master of the genre. There is no better. And you can't go wrong with any of the eighteen Archer novels.
This is easily one of the best Lew Archer novels, although I give the edge to The Way Some People Die and The Galton Case A Lew Archer Novel. Like those novels, this one has a surprising number of elements, very evocative of postwar California. The Ivory Grin goes beyond noir into the macabre
... Two pale hands sprang out from his dark silhouette and gripped the bars framing his face. He swayed from side to side, and I saw the white blaze on one side of his tangled head. His shoulders writhed. He seemed to be trying to wrench the bars out of their concrete sockets. Each time he tried and failed, he said one word in a low growling guttural. “Hell,” he said. “Hell. Hell.” The word fell heavily from his mouth forty or fifty times while his body tugged and heaved, flinging itself violently from side to side. He left the window then, as suddenly as he had appeared in it. I watched his slow shadow retreat across the ceiling and dissolve out of human shape.
Re-reading it, wondering why it didn't make the cut in the Library of America (it is far better than THE DOOMSTERS), I did notice some very 'writerly' similes and descriptions. A more experienced writer can do more with less. The final chapters, however, are so satisfying and well-written- a virtual descent into the Hell foreshadowed in the passage quoted above- that I was willing to forgive Macdonald all minor flaws. That extremely corny, intentionally corny line, "This is the payoff, Wionowski," is so startling in context, and yet so well prepared by the entire book (we are dealing with the Purple Gang, for crying out loud) that I lost all doubt. This is a great book.
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