Word: archere
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...contemplating the politics of despair has left you a little ill in mind and heart, if you crave a measure of vicarious escape, I do not direct you to the series of fourteen novels Ross MacDonald has written about Los Angeles private detective Lew Archer. That would be a bit too much like presenting a presurgical patient with Gray's Anatomy by way of light reading...
...MacDonald, newly discharged from the Navy and beginning a career as a novelist, was casting about for a form. That year, long before he created Lew Archer, he produced two books which, their considerable merits aside, are valuable as indicators of his early concern with themes and fictional modes which dominate his later writing. Blue City is an ultra-tough, gut-wrenching narrative of personal vengeance, distinguished by a flexible and convincing use of vernacular speech, a sound knowledge of the impact produced on a human body by objects of diverse shape and size, and a vision of American life...
...Archer novels are laced with strange and wonderful accomplishments. The two masterpieces, The Chill and The Zebra Striped Hearse are as different in narrative approach as two mysteries rooted in perverse family situations could be. The first is an intensive, static exploration of personal and criminal relationships in a tiny California college, while the second is a novel in motion, sprawling over the whole Southwest and Mexico. But each of these divergent books works a similar splendid change on one of the shopworn tricks of the mystery trade, the revelation of guilt which confutes the reader's expectations. MacDonald transforms...
...idea of Lion & Unicorn was conceived by Lieut. Colonel V.A.J. (Villiers Archer John) Heald, 49, a onetime Scots Guardsman and wartime aide-de-camp to Dwight Eisenhower. Heald last year accompanied the Duke of Edinburgh on a U.S. tour to tout British goods. He heard complaints everywhere that Americans could never find suitable British products in their stores. Heald returned to London to round up partners and money, formed Lion & Unicorn as "an effective way to bring people together by trade...
Developed by two Winthrop chemists, Dr. Sydney Archer and Dr. Noel Albertson, the drug has the chemical name pentazocine and is trade-named Talwin. In six years, it has been tested on 12,000 patients and has relieved severe pain associated with surgery, injuries, cancer, childbirth, bone diseases arthritis and dental conditions. The pa- tients obtained about as much relief a they would have from morphine, but did not require increasing doses. Th side effects, such as nausea and dizziness, were usually mild. Government agencies are not yet willing to say flatly that pentazocine is nonaddicting, but they...