Word: lew
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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...
...itself which is the finest of MacDonald's accomplishments. Isolated, guilty, constantly compromised by the nature of his work and the demands of personal and professional survival, he labors not to change a world or any corner of it, but to preserve something of his own integrity and decency. Lew Archer is a natural successor to Hammett's jaded Continental Op and Chandler's cynical knight-errant, Philip Marlowe, but his problems and solutions are far closer to us and the business of living...
...Something is amiss in the great port city of Canton in the year A.D. 680, when Judge Dee arrives from Peking, ostensibly to look into foreign trade. What is missing-and what the Tang dynasty's master detective is looking for-is a fellow named Lew, the Imperial censor and pivotal power in the palace intrigues of the capital. Lew soon turns up dead, murdered by a delayed-action poison. The judge, of course, finds his culprit after dealing with a clutch of lively characters: the blind and beautiful Lan-lee, who collects crickets; Zumurrud, a half-caste belly...
John Braden has designed an effective set, and his lighting is most dramatic. Lew Smith's costumes are, as usual, colorful enough to make a peacock blush and wonderful to behold...