Black Money

by Ross Macdonald

Book Overview

When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on the suspiciously suave Frenchman who's run off with his client's girlfriend, it looks like a simple case of alienated affections. Things look different when the mysterious foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts. Black Money is Ross Macdonald at his finest, baring the skull beneath the untanned skin of Southern California's high society.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679768106
• ISBN13: 9780679768104
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

One of Ross Macdonald's best.

Veteran private eye Lew Archer finds himself hobnobbing with the country club set and an academic type or two as he wends his way through this very engaging mystery. Hired to investigate a mysterious stranger who claims to be a wealthy French aristocrat, Archer manages to uncover a number of diverse yet interrelated scandals and crimes dating back a dozen years and more. The intricate plot unfolds against the backdrop of a quiet suburban town just to the south of LA, with a short sojourn to one of Las Vegas' less reputable casinos. There are a number of interesting characters and the well crafted narrative twists and turns in some very intriguing ways. Moreover, Macdonald's smart, insightful prose makes Black Money compellingly readable. Ross Macdonald was in top form when he wrote Black Money. Read it, it's a real page turner.

Memorable

Just re-read Black Money... perhaps it is MacDonald at his zenith, a bit before great fame found him, but after he had fully developed his stride. Some of his later books seem too contrived. In Black Money, not all the youth are innocents corrupted by curdled California elders... the Martel character in particular is refreshingly different from MacDonald's usual suspects. That many of the middle-aged American characters end up dead (or worse) certainly rings the bell for me. Very highly recommended.

THE GREAT GATSBY CALIFORNIA STYLE

As a mystery author with my first novel in initial release, I want to state here that Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series ruined my life. It showed me how powerful mystery writing can be and led me to my writing aspirations in this literary field. BLACK MONEY is among my favorite Macdonald books. It's an updated version of THE GREAT GATSBY, moved to the southern California coast. Archer is hired to investigate a young man who arrives in an affluent coastal city presenting himself as an aristocratic Frenchman. He wins the heart of the most desirable maiden in town, and people are suspicious about this aristocrat's background. Archer investigates and uncovers to sorry truth about several different people. BLACK MONEY is an American crime fiction classic.

Read it

An elegant masterpiece of crime fiction. Vivid and unsentimental, with crisp stylish prose, "Black Money" shows thepower of Ross Macdonald work, and Black Lizard should keep 'em coming. By the end of the book, I was experiencing so many emotions I didn't know what to feel.. Highly recommended

The finest series in American detective fiction.

Hammet, Chandler, McBain, Pronzini, Block and Parker are all masters of the American detective novel. The first two created the form, the last four continue to carry it out with both continued freshness and comfortable familiarity. The most perfect form, however, is the series of Lew Archer stories and novels written by the late Ross MacDonald. Like Chandler an immigant, he caught the smell and the feel of Southern California better than a native. He also crystalized the inner calmness and unwavering honor of the classic private eye, without awkwardness and sentiment. Perhaps the greatest tribute that could be given to MacDonald the writer is that he only wrote one story, but wrote it so well that each time was a new experience. This story is just that, a fresh look at the classic life and conflict in a Southern California that never existed but is real and beloved to everyone who admires and appreciates this very American form of literature.