The Doomsters [Paperback]

In some ways The Doomsters is a typical Lew Archer thriller: it involves a missing suspected murderer, family strife, and mysterious deaths in the distant past. This time, Archer falls in love and self-interest actually hinders him from being the moral center of the novel. What keeps the pace of the novel flowing is the theme of a man condemned by society and Archer's efforts to prove his innocence. There is also plenty of bloodshed, betrayals, and enough plot twists to keep the conclusion a surprise. In spite of the tragic turn the story takes there is the redemption for Archer who makes up for his own dreadful mistake in the past. It explains a great deal about Archer, his motivation and his maturity which grows in later Ross Macdonald novels.

I was in a St. Louis indie bookstore today and was delighted that one of the other customers was looking for anything by Ross MacDonald. MacDonald, who died in 1983, would probably be proud that his Lew Archer is being re-published and re-discovered by old and new fans alike. The man was a master storyteller and his prose is as striking as when he was writing in his prime in the 1950s.

The Doomsters, originally published in 1958, is no exception. Its lyrical prose should be considered the epitome of character development and imagery. This is probably the definitive Archer book and readers learn more about Lew and what makes him the man he becomes in later novels.

The novel opens with a pounding on the door at the crack of dawn--and takes off from there. An escapee from a mental institution, clad in "the kind of clothes they give you to wear in prison" has landed on Archer's doorstep on the advice of a fellow escapee, Tom Rica, whom Lew had helped years earlier. Carl Hallman wants Lew to investigate the death of his father, a powerful Senator from California. Carl is sure that the attending physician, Dr. Grantland, killed him, but he needs Lew's help to prove it.

Never one to turn down a chance to be nosey, Lew drives Carl to the family estate in the little town of Purissima. There resides Carl's brother Jerry and Jerry's wife Zinnie. Met by a deputy sheriff, Carl runs away from Lew and becomes the subject of an intense manhunt. More bodies start popping up, specifically Jerry's. Then Lew learns that there are some unanswered questions about Carl's wife Mildred, the Senator's death, and the even death of Carl's mother three years before.

Lew has a knack for uncovering buried secrets, and those secrets rise to the top in The Doomsters. Striking, unconventional PI prose and the ability to layer story lines make Ross MacDonald one of the greatest crime writers of the twentieth century.

Armchair Interviews agrees.

Most detectives in fiction are stoic people who never seem to have a past of their own, at least not one that ever gets talked about much. In this novel, Ross MacDonald changes all that. His ace private eye Lew Archer is not only delving into the pasts of the characters he's investigating, trying to get to the bottom of a murder, but before it's all over he's forced to face his own past as well. Tom Rica, a heroin addict he had tried to help a few years earlier and then dismissed when his help wasn't working, reappears in his life and tells Archer that the murder of Alicia Hallman was not committed by her daughter-in-law Mildred, but by Dr. Grantland - something Rica had tried to tell him years ago, but Archer wouldn't listen. Lew Archer doesn't track down bad guys from the point of view of a removed third party - he becomes one of them. In his own way, he contributed to the death of Hallman. Guilt is an important element in the story, some of it misapplied, and Archer is forced to share in it. It's a brilliant concept, and MacDonald develops it well. This, I believe, is the first Archer novel that deserves the appellation "masterpiece."