Word: archers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...hull is a classic; its lineage traces back to a 19th century naval architect named Colin Archer, who was commissioned to design a boat for harbor pilots going out to meet incoming sailing ships. Archer developed a double-ended hull capable of standing offshore for weeks at a time, then making for home shorthanded in steep northern seas...
...while Macdonald's detective, the super sympatico Lew Archer, is finding out about the burning of a ship off Okinawa in World War II the murder of Laurel's husband's mother over twenty years before, the love affairs of Laurel's father and uncle, and the strange relationship between Laurel's husband and his cousin. With true Dickensian finesse, Macdonald (and Archer, too) weaves all these threads together until the real picture becomes visible...
Figure that Archer gets hit on the head once every case. Sometimes it's more, sometimes less, but it must average out to at least that. Now that's not only a lot of punishment-Archer must be, what, 50-some?-it's a lot of hospital bills. No wonder he's broke all the time. In Sleeping Beauty he complains about money. He has just about enough to make the rent on his $200-a-month apartment, he says, and pay the office bills, and that's it. What's he going...
Decay. All in character, of course. Archer is as much loser as winner. In his wash-and-wear slacks and sports jacket he shoulders resentfully among the heedless rich and the heedless young who are the villains of Macdonald's recurrent daydream, and ours. Roughly at first, then with a rough man's compassion, he rubs their noses in mortality, the loser's truth. See the proud millionaire grovel, as Archer spades up the moldering past! See the sneering teenager whine, as Archer lays bare the certain decay that lies ahead...
...these satisfactions an occasional confirmation of the law's venality, a whiff of burning plastic as Southern California chars at the edges, and Archer's own pleasurable disillusions, and-for the reader who is unyoung, unrich and undelighted-you have a fantasy very nearly worth 19 reruns. Archer's middle-aged tiredness is the necessary anchor in reality; the reader is not Billy Batson any more, and he will not believe Captain Marvel...