sabakhalid

The is the second published novel by Ross Macdonald, but I suspect much of it dates from his WWII navy days, before Macdonald began to pursue his doctorate in English at the University of Michigan. The plot is often rambling and occasionally forced, and the writing is filled with overwritten passages, many of them turgid and pretentious. These problems are present in "The Dark Tunnel" too, but here they seem even more amateurish, evidence of a new writer painfully learning his craft. The plot, involving U.S. wartime codes, a foreign spy ring, and Negro secret societies, begins at a navy party in Honolulu, moves to a dive bar in Detroit, starts picking up speed on a transcontinental railway journey, and--after a brief stopover in Southern California--ends in a remote hacienda on the outskirts of Tijuana. Each stage in the journey brings another murder, and also brings Ensign Sam Drake a little closer to solving the mystery. One small observation and a question. Observation: there is a touch of paternalistic racism in this novel, and one scene that positively makes me cringe. Drake, who needs to know something about an African-American secret society, is advised to ask "any intelligent Negro," and so he arbitrarily picks a pullman porter as a source. Question: why is it that the white liberal racism of the forties often seems more pathetic, stranger and weirder than the outright racism of the Klan? Oh . . . and, remember, Macdonald fans, this definitely ain't Lew Archer. No, not in any sense of the word.

2023-06-26 14:22