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5.0 out of 5 stars
Cure Cultural Volcanics with Bubbling Champagne. Design Life To Suit Taste & Times., May 21 2006
This book didn't merely capture my reading interest. It became a book of my heart...
In McNally's SECRET, the pilot to this series, we're informed that the pater McNally is not an old-money man. (That's not the secret.) I had accepted the face value of the Palm Beach mansion and the genteel lifestyle of pater Prescott McNally, Yale graduate, leather-bound-Dickens-reading, attorney-at-law. Upon reading the illuminating passages of Archy's grandparent's ways into money, I began to wonder what other Secrets this novel might expose.
The opening of this novel was classic, and felt to be the initiation of what Sanders was born and itching to write, beyond the sagas of his other fine works. The introductory remarks were exquisite in mapping the reasons for, "Can't you ever be serious, Archy?"
Comparing himself to S. Holmes, Archy says: "I can't glance at a man and immediately know he's left-handed, constipated, has a red-headed wife, and slices lox for a living. I do investigations a fact at a time. Eventually they add up -- I hope. I'm very big on hope."
Archy's description of the start up of the Pelican Club was the best type of soul food. This is how and why such a club should be started: "We were facing Chapter 7 when we had the great good fortune to hire the Pettibones, an African-American family who had been living in one of the gamier neighborhoods of West Palm Beach and wanted out."
They wanted out and they deserved a chance where their skills could and would save not only themselves, but those who hired them. Isn't that the type of win/win the world needs now?
I almost sobbed at the below passage, I felt such a deep surge of "right on" (definitely did a breath-catch hiccup and heart moan): "... we formed a six-piece jazz combo (I played tenor kazoo), and we were delighted to perform, without fee, at public functions and nursing homes. A Palm Beach critic wrote of one of our recitals, 'Words fail me.' You couldn't ask for a better review than that."
Yep. This is a book of my heart.
The first lines in SECRET, the sipping of champagne from a belly button would snag the attention of even the most sexually skittish reader of the nose-raised, neck-cricked, personality persuasion. But, truly and honestly, what sunk me with every hook were the few lines exposing why Archy could never be serious. On page 1 chapter 1, one of the main selling points of the series bursts through:
"I had lived through dire warnings of nuclear catastrophe, global warming, ozone depletion, universal extinction via cholesterol, and the invasion of killer bees. After a while my juices stopped their panicky surge and I realized I was bored with all these screeched predictions of Armageddon due next Tuesday. It hadn't happened yet, had it? The old world tottered along, and I was content to totter along with it."
I'd bet my fortune (which is based on a skill of "make do"; there are no bananas in it) that the above passage is what captured a collection of readers so absolutely in a "right on" agreement that this series spanned the grave of the author and is still spewing pages and stretching shelves. And, of course, this attitude of "if you can't lick 'em; flick 'em" which Archy aimed toward kvetch-ers as he terms them, continues from the above, with relish accumulating, throughout the book.
Archy is a rare sane person swimming along nicely within the insanity of a last-gasp-culture (which is "drowning in The Be Careful Sea" as I described and termed that syndrome in one of my sci fi manuscripts titled MORNING COMES).
To Jennifer, of the champagne sea in her belly button, Archy answered why he wasn't an attorney: "Because I was expelled from Yale Law for not being serious enough. During a concert by the New York Philharmonic I streaked across the stage, naked except for a Richard M. Nixon mask."
That answer brought to mind the bright side of Howard Roark (from Ayn Rand's FOUNTAINHEAD, who was arrogantly unconcerned about his and the Dean's reasons for Roark's being expelled from architectural school. You'd be right to wonder where I got that comparison, since Roark could never be accused of being anything but serious. Syncopated irony? Assonance?
You be the judge. Get the SECRET of the McNally collection.
As I relished the final chapters and pages of SECRET, I had a thought about the beauty, warmth, lovely literary melancholy, and subtly complex richness radiating from those concluding textual treasures:
In retrospect, this novel doesn't feel like a planned pilot to a mystery series. It feels to be a singular novel, like but not like, the ones Sanders had written prior to it. What it feels like to me is that Lawrence hit upon a "soul speak" story which couldn't halt the cultural conversation it had initiated, however serendipitous that initiation may have been.
I had speculated on something which could seem contradictory to the above mentioned thought. I had wondered if Parker's Senser series might have been somehow a spark for this McNally series. I continued to see references to Boston in this book, which, of course, is the city for which Spenser did the Walkabout. So possibly SECRET was somewhat an antithetical homage to Spenser, possibly even a hat doff with a friendly, competitive, one-better attempt, meant only to be a single novel rather than a never-die series.
Based on Agatha Christie's official web site, Miss Marple was not originally intended to be another Poirot, and look what happened there.
To me, Archy appears to be a gatekeeper for pure and primal, hidden wishes and dreams. Living home comfortably, guiltlessly at 37, on the top floor of his parent's mansion in Palm Beach; eating drool-food from a house chef; having established a club like The Pelican as a side atmosphere to partake in daily; working at a cushy, just challenging enough, engaging career for discreet inquiries ... If an author's (or reader's) going to retire that would be da place (or at least an entertaining option).
I felt lucky to find a vender on Amazon (a-bookworm2) holding a used G. P. Putnam's Sons hardcover of this novel, a first printing of the 1992 copyright. What an honor it is to have this version of the pilot of such an auspicious series from such a life-perceptive author, Lawrence Sanders. The glossy-black jacket provides a luscious background for the name and title printed in thick, gleaming, copper ink, with the artwork of an antique magnifying glass and fancy-brass scissors weighing down the million-dollar-valued, 1918 US Stamp of the Inverted Jenny.
This pilot is a rare find in a rare series.
Linda G. Shelnutt
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A pleasurable romp with a pleasurable chap!, Mar 18 2004
Lawrence Sanders' first Archibald McNally novel is much like Arhcy's mother, pleasingly plump and full of delight! Archy is part of McNally & Son Attorney-At-Law, notice the word 'attorney' is singular, not plural. That's because Archy is not a lawyer, though he did go to law school. But he got kicked out. We won't go into that unpleastantness, however.
Dear, dear Archy heads a department of his father's firm called "Discreet Inquiries", he heads it because he's the only person in that particular department. Archy is asked to make some "discreet inquiries" into the disappearance in rich-and-randy Lady Cynthia Horowitz's valuable Inverted Jenny stamps. They could be worth upwards of a cool half a mil. Archy has several suspects, including but not limited to, the Smythes (whom are Lady C's son and wife), Lacy C's daughter Gina Stanescu, including Lady C's other son and wife. And her dear friend the very much gay Angus Wolfson, Lady C's chaffeur and and his girlfriend. But more and more questions arise, like: why is Lady C costantly leaving in her bronze-colored Jag and not telling her social secretary where she's going? Is Wolfson and Lady C's chaffeur having an affair? And what about Archy's personal life? Will the beautiful and astute Jennifer Towley go back to her husband or stick with Archy? One never knows, does one?
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5.0 out of 5 stars
playboy detective creates justice, May 25 2003
This book is very appealing and well written. It has a likeable protagonist, a series of interesting suspects, and a nice second plot theme (Archy's lovelife). Near the end, we are led to a shocking revelation which explains some of the strange behavior which puzzles Archy through most of the book. Archy uses his secret to his advantage, as he solves a tangled set of problems in a clever way. Overall, I would say this book reminds me of the tone of Lawrence Block's Bernie the Burglar series, which is also excellent.
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by Lawrence Sanders
by Lawrence Sanders
