The Goodbye Look

By Ross Macdonald

Book Overview

In The Goodbye Look , Lew Archer is hired to investigate a burglary at the mission-style mansion of Irene and Larry Chalmers. The prime suspect, their son Nick, has a talent for disappearing, and the Chalmerses are a family with money and memories to burn. As Archer zeros in on Nick, he discovers a troubled blonde, a stash of wartime letters, a mysterious hobo. Then a stiff turns up in a car on an empty beach. And Nick turns up with a Colt .45. In The Goodbye Look , Ross Macdonald delves into the world of the rich and the troubled and reveals that the past has a deadly way of catching up to the present. If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it is Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his pre-decessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375708650
• ISBN13: 9780375708657
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

One of the Best

The Goodbye Look is one of the best Lew Archer novels by Ross MacDonald. Archer is called to investigate the theft of an antique jewelry box owned by the wealthy Chalmers family. Suspicion quickly falls on the only child, son Nick. This is one of the three or four best in the Lew Archer series, which is another way of saying that it is one of the ten or so best detective stories ever published. It is also maybe the most complicated of the Archers. There are many characters. I strongly recommend you write them down as they appear. Draw a graph showing who is related to who. For that reason, I do not recommend this as the first Archer novel to read. The final resolution is not quite what I was hoping. However, it is certainly good and makes sense. We have here many of the recurring themes that are in all but the earliest Archer novels: The private mental hospital. The strange disappearance of someone a generation earlier, probably murdered. Wealthy people who got that way at the ultimate expense of their children. The only thing this one is missing relative to some of other later novels in the Archer canon is a lot of the incredible off hand descriptions and musings. Ross MacDonald was one of the finest writers - forget detective - that this nation has ever produced. His Archer novels are full of insights and descriptions of amazing power that resonate in the mind. I didn't find quite so many in this one. - henry

The Goodbye Look

The Goodbye Look is another excellent Lew Archer novel by Ross MacDonald. Archer is called on the case to investigate the theft of a antique jewelry box owned by the wealthy Chalmers family. Initially suspicion falls on the Nick the only son. Nick is a mixed up kid who has just dropped out of college. As Archer investigates, the threads he pulls lead him to murders commited decades before. This another excellent installment in the Lew Archer series. MacDonlad is a worthy heir to Hammett and Chandler in the hardboiled detective genre.

The Gooddbye Look/ private eye/mystery

Ross Macdonald is an excellent writer of the private eye and mystery grouping.. the book was in excellent condition/ paperback .. and delivery was adequate..