Sleeping Beauty (Lew Archer Series #17) Book

"I tried to move like a neutral in the no man's land between the lawless and the law. But when the shooting started I generally knew which side I belonged on."


Archer is on his way back from Mazatlán to Pacific Point, California, when he sees the oil spill that will play a part in this complex unraveling of old sins coming to bear on the present. Some of Macdonald's descriptions, as seen through Archer's eyes from the air as his plane comes in, are wonderful, capturing the terrible price paid by nature when men are careless, and care only about money:

"An offshore oil platform stood up out of its windward end like the metal handle of a dagger that had stabbed the world and made it spill black blood."

Archer as narrator talks about Pacific Point being one of his favorite places on the California coast, because of its beauty. Then once he's on the ground there's this:

"From the hill above the harbor I could see the enormous slick spreading like premature night across the sea."

Moments later, in a walk along the damaged beach, Archer happens upon the girl in the case. Laurel Russo is trying to save a bird covered in oil. Her grief and pain at the bird's plight tells Archer that she's in emotional trouble which goes far beyond the bird's. He takes her back with him to his apartment, and after a phone call to her estranged husband, Tom, a pharmacist, she bolts. Archer quickly discovers she's taken from his medicine cabinet a bottle of sleeping tablets, and is alarmed because of her fragile state.

Thus begins his desperate search for the girl. He's seen two men at a restaurant that he notes early on, and they will come into play at a certain point. One of them will, in fact, wash ashore on the morning after Archer has a brief liaison with Elizabeth. She is tied to the Somerville and Lennox clans, who are responsible for the black blood creeping toward shore. They may also be responsible for some real blood spilled on an escort carrier headed for Okinawa, and in a bedroom where a child remained alone for days after the murder of its mother. There is a ransom note, and a kidnapping which might be very real, or might be faked. That unknown leads Archer to be less than forthcoming with the authorities, because his main priority is Laurel.

I recalled this as my favorite among Ross Macdonald's literate Lew Archer novels. The Lew Archer novels were a means to an end for Macdonald, who used the form to spotlight broken and damaged people in peril, and in need of mending. After revisiting the narrative, I find it to be the zenith of what he tried to do with the detective form, which as he once noted, gave him all the rope he'd ever need. Just how good Sleeping Beauty is, and how the author felt about it, might be indicated by his dedicating the book to Eudora Welty, with whom he had a sort of 84 Charing Cross Road type of relationship. Sleeping Beauty is literate yet full of movement as the search for Laurel in the present begins spiraling backward toward the past. It is a labyrinth, the entanglement of one family's affairs and the damage it has strewn across both the physical landscape and the emotional one.

One of the things which strikes the reader is how unpleasant most of the people Archer encounters seem to be. Archer occasionally bites back, but has to stop short so that he can find out what he needs to know to find Laurel. There seems to be little warmth or tenderness among most of the family. When they speak, their words have an edge of nastiness or dismissal you often encounter in those who've either gotten their way for too long because of money and bluster, or have never gotten their way because they were the recipients of the bluster, but not the money. The more Archer talks to those around Laurel, the more it becomes evident that something is being hidden:

"The dim air of the place oppressed me. I felt as if I was lost in the catacombs under a city where no one could be trusted or believed."

That mistrust includes Elizabeth, with whom Archer shares a tender moment, only to discover that's all it was:

"I couldn't tell if she was a hard woman who had moments of softness, or a soft woman who could be hard on occasion."

The men fare even worse, either unpleasant and obstinate, or deeply troubled, like Laurel's husband, Tom, who may be as messed up as his young wife. Archer walks in on him having a dream, and it confirms that some past trauma is the catalyst for what's happening now. Why Archer even cares, beyond his sense of responsibility over the bottle of sleeping pills, is explained in something Laurel has written on the back of a heartfelt letter from her husband, Tom:

"I get these terrible depressions and then I don't want to live in the world at all. Not even with you. But I'm fighting it."

It is this letter, and Laurel's response, which creates sympathy for the couple, and Laurel especially. Macdonald wisely gives it to the reader about a quarter way into the story, so we'll care as much as Archer. Up to that point, the people are so insufferable we almost want Archer to start slapping them around. It helps draw the reader in, and explains why Archer puts up with them. He needs them, so he can keep pushing them, and get at the truth so that he can give the couple damaged by their respective families a chance.

The ending is quiet yet powerful, softly and sadly reverberating back through the narrative, as was Macdonald's intent. Sleeping Beauty is a wonderful piece of writing, and I'm still of the opinion that this is his most successful novel in terms of what he was attempting to do. It would certainly explain him dedicating Sleeping Beauty to Eudora Welty. On a technical note, it has a couple of typos which don't affect the reading ' although one of them makes a sentence confusing for a moment. Every book has them, even the great ones, so it's not a big deal.

This is a terrific, literate novel which just happens to be a mystery story featuring a detective. That's probably the best way to describe all of Macdonald's later novels, once he'd moved sideways from Chandler. I don't quite agree with Anthony Boucher, who suggested in the New York Times that Macdonald was a better novelist than Chandler and Hammett ever were, because it really is apples and oranges. I think Eudora Welty came much closer to pinning down the difference in styles, so I'll allow her words to punctuate my review of Sleeping Beauty:

"A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were."