The Mean Streets

THE CHILL is a novel that I read at least once every year. If you wonder what it is that so attracts me to this work, well, I attempt to answer that question in the appreciation that follows:

Writing in an introduction to an omnibus edition containing three of his best novels (ARCHER AT LARGE, 1970), Ross MacDonald referred to THE CHILL as “… that basilisk of a book.” In case your memory concerning such strange critters is a little rusty, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “basilisk” as “a mythical reptile with a lethal gaze or breath, hatched by a serpent from a cock’s egg.” That snippet of information alone is enough to give you an inking of the depth and artistic complexity of this novel. To say any more along those lines, however, would be to run the risk of spoiling one of the most shocking surprise endings in the genre. (And the surprise is almost as powerful the second, third, or even fourth time through the book as it is the first!).

THE CHILL is just about as perfect a specimen of detective fiction as you are likely to encounter … anytime, anywhere, or written by anyone. This is one of the three or four books that constitute the “gold standard” by which all other such novels should be judged and, by necessity, be found wanting. Compelling characters, gritty and realistic dialogue, prose as efficient and forceful as a quick left hook to the chin, this book has it all. Add to that list a psychological profundity and a plot that, although as byzantine and as labyrinthineas has perhaps ever been conceived, is nevertheless logically coherent and hideously plausible. Oh, and we’d better not forget to mention a femme fatale that makes an enraged black widow spider look like a child’s beloved pet by comparison: “I couldn’t see her eyes clearly, but I knew they were bright and black and vital … She was still greedy for life.”  What MacDonald has crafted here is a book that has reached the level of an archetype.

Alex and Dolly Kincaid are young newlyweds enjoying their honeymoon. After encountering an older man with a beard, a frightened Mrs. Kincaid disappears without a word to her husband. After nearly two weeks of frantic searching on his own, the desperate husband turns to Lew Archer for help in locating his wife.  Archer finds the missing woman in short order. In the process, however, the detective also discovers three murders separated by nearly twenty-two years that may or may not hold the key to Dolly’s disappearing act and to her almost pathological desire to stay missing. At the center of a web of lies, deceit, selfishness and official malfeasance, Archer encounters a history of bizarre (even perverse) family relationships and recriminations that make the Oedipus clan look rather well adjusted.

Only a very few books can (or should) be mentioned in the same breath with THE MALTESE FALCON, say, and THE BIG SLEEP. As anyone who has read it will tell you, however, THE CHILL is just such a book. This is MacDonald at his absolute best. And that means, quite simply, that there is very little out there any better!

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