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Our Assessment:
B+ : solid P.I. novel, nicely turned See our review for fuller assessment.
From the Reviews: - Return to top of the page - The complete review's Review:
The Galton Case begins with private eye Lew Archer summoned by attorney Gordon Sable, who wants to hire him on behalf of one of his clients.
Sable isn't in his offices when Archer shows up for the appointment, asking that Archer come to his home -- which gives the investigator an opportunity to encounter Sable's troubled (and much younger) wife, as well as houseman Peter Culligan (who seems particularly ill-suited for such a position).
What Sable wants Archer to look into is a missing person: Anthony Galton, the only child from a very wealthy family, who disappeared some twenty years earlier, in 1936, at the age of twenty-two.
His mother is now seriously ill and wants to find him before she dies, hoping that she and her son can be reconciled after all this time.
They fell into my lap. It's one of the things that made me suspicious. Too many coincidences come -together -- the Culligan murder, the Brown-Galton murder, the Brown-Galton boy turning up, if that's who he is. I can't help feeling that the whole business may have been planned to come out this way.That's the point he's reached roughly midway through the novel -- still leaving quite a while for him to stumble (and travel, extensively) around until he's managed to put all the pieces into proper place. Old Mrs.Galton is satisfied with the (preliminary) outcome, convinced the boy who had been calling himself John Brown is indeed her grandson and happy to take him in. The boy, unsurprisingly, embraces and adjusts readily enough to his new-found standard of living (though, as Archer mutters to himself in the background: "money was never free. Like any other commodity, it had to be paid for"). The boy's story is plausible enough -- but quite a few of the details prove hard to check. Archer can't shake the sneaking suspicion that the boy is an impostor. Not least among the small, possible clues there are some indications that the boy is .... from Canada ! (an amusing nod to writing-under-a-pseudonym Macdonald's own Canadian background). As Archer tells Sable, while he's still sniffing around: I can't prove it, but I can feel it. The Galton boy is a phony, part of a big conspiracy, with the Organization behind it.That's what a lot of the evidence -- and the beating Archer takes -- would seem to suggest, but it turns out not to be entirely that straightforward. Macdonald offers a few nice twists along the way -- not least in the resolution of Peter's murder -- and, while there are maybe too many coïncidences (not least among the connections between the cast of characters) and a final reveal that's arguably too clever by half, it does make for a satisfying thriller. A cut above the usual P.I. novel, one can easily understand why The Galton Case is considered the Archer novel where Macdonald really begins to find his groove. There is a lot stuffed in here -- overlaps across more than twenty years -- but Macdonald works it all out pretty neatly. - M.A.Orthofer, 3 August 2022 - Return to top of the page - The Galton Case:
- Return to top of the page - Canadian-American author Ross Macdonald (actually: Kenneth Millar) lived 1915 to 1983. - Return to top of the page -
© 2022 the complete review
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