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Lew Archer returns in this gripping mystery, widely recognized as one of acclaimed mystery writer Ross Macdonald's very best, about the search for the long lost heir of the wealthy Galton family. Almost twenty years have passed since Anthony Galton disappeared, along with a suspiciously streetwise bride and several thousand dollars of his family's fortune. Now Anthony's mother wants him back and has hired Lew Archer to find him. What turns up is a headless skeleton, a boy who claims to be Galton's son, and a con game whose stakes are so high that someone is still willing to kill for them. Devious and poetic, The Galton Case displays MacDonald at the pinnacle of his form.
User reviews
LibraryThing member jburlinson
So many of these Lew Archers follow the same plan that it's hard to keep the details straight after a few years (or days). What remains are typically one or two well-realized locales (in this case, a run-down motor hotel) and reassuring reminder that's it's impossible to escape the past.
LibraryThing member Bookmarque
Quite a twisted and elaborate plot, but satisfying. Archer takes the worst beating I've seen a noir detective take and all the players are connected. At first it seemed too easy with clues and facts seeming to fall into his lap. I should have been suspicious, but alas, he got me. Not that I didn't
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enjoy it. Show Less
LibraryThing member benfulton
It's always nice to be reminded that you can have a good detective story that consists of the detective stumping around, going door to door, following up leads, and eventually figuring out what really happened. This is what happens in the first half of this book, but in the second half, the nice
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puzzle that Archer thinks he has solved comes unraveled, and that works neatly as well - not least because, to figure out the right solution, Archer keeps on going door to door and following up leads. There's a short detour taken in the middle of the book where quite a bit of violence is exercised. It's not quite gratuitous violence - it does a good job of focusing down one possible lead that Archer is following - but still it made for a bit of silliness where some rather nasty injuries were fixed up and made good on in the course of a few days. But very solid detective fiction if you like the type. Show Less
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
I'll see if I can sum this up without giving anything away or confusing myself. Lew Archer, private investigator, has been hired by an old friend (and lawyer) to find the missing son of a wealthy widow. The investigation appears to be pretty pointless. Son Anthony Galton ran away twenty years
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earlier when he married a woman not to his parents' liking. They were so upset they ordered him to "never darken their doorstep again" which he hasn't. Now, twenty years later mum wants to make amends and give her prodigal son his share of the inheritance...only no one can find him. Here's what is found: Anthony took on the assumed name of John Brown and he presumably had a son of the same name, John Brown Jr. Now the real mystery is does John Brown Jr. deserve his share of the pie? Of course there are many, many more twists and turns to this mystery! Show Less
LibraryThing member idiotgirl
Audible. I listened to this book while driving to Sacramento and then to San Francisco. Macdonald is always a reliable, lean, mean read. The Galton Case is set along the coast west from Redwood City, in San Francisco, over to Sacramento. Late 40s and early 50s. Not only a good story but gave me
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such a wonderful sense of driving through history. Drives (and listens) don't get much more satisfying. And I'll always give Ross Macdonald a 4. Can't do what he does any better. . Show Less
LibraryThing member leslie.98
A very good entry in the Lew Archer PI series with an extra twist at the end.
LibraryThing member john.cooper
There are 18 novels in the Lew Archer series, and this is number 8. It’s one of the four chosen by the Library of America for their Ross Macdonald collection — the same four I would have picked, based on my reading of the eight so far. It’s terrific. I feel sad. It’s got to be downhill from
The plot is launched when a aged millionaire hires Archer, through her lawyer, to find the son who left the family under unpleasant circumstances decades before. She’s dying, and wants to reconcile first. But the man Archer turns up isn’t the missing son, but a young man who looks and sounds just like him and claims to be his son, though he grew up far away and never knew his father, the missing heir. The son seems honest enough, but his story is suspicious, the criminal underground seems always to be on the edge of the picture, and there are tens of millions of dollars in inheritance at stake. Is the boy a ringer in a con years in the making? And whose are the headless bones found under a housing development on the coast of the South Bay?
The mystery seems to be resolved, and the client is satisfied. But Archer wants all the loose ends tied up. He makes an ill-advised trip to Nevada and ends up in the hospital; he spends the last half of the book making people wonder how many buses he got hit by. We’ve come a long way since the first Archer book, when he was knocked unconscious three times in 36 hours only to pop up repeatedly like an inflatable punching bag. He’s become a believable character. The tolerance for gray moral areas he picked up in the last book, The Doomsters, has stuck, too, and serves him well.
As with the previous two books in the series, I’d be happy to read this book again, just a few days after finishing it. The book’s plot is complex and ingenious, and the resolution throws a new light on everything that led up to it. And while elements of the story are grim, it’s not nihilist-bleak; it even ends, literally, on a hopeful note.
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here.The plot is launched when a aged millionaire hires Archer, through her lawyer, to find the son who left the family under unpleasant circumstances decades before. She’s dying, and wants to reconcile first. But the man Archer turns up isn’t the missing son, but a young man who looks and sounds just like him and claims to be his son, though he grew up far away and never knew his father, the missing heir. The son seems honest enough, but his story is suspicious, the criminal underground seems always to be on the edge of the picture, and there are tens of millions of dollars in inheritance at stake. Is the boy a ringer in a con years in the making? And whose are the headless bones found under a housing development on the coast of the South Bay?
The mystery seems to be resolved, and the client is satisfied. But Archer wants all the loose ends tied up. He makes an ill-advised trip to Nevada and ends up in the hospital; he spends the last half of the book making people wonder how many buses he got hit by. We’ve come a long way since the first Archer book, when he was knocked unconscious three times in 36 hours only to pop up repeatedly like an inflatable punching bag. He’s become a believable character. The tolerance for gray moral areas he picked up in the last book, The Doomsters, has stuck, too, and serves him well.
As with the previous two books in the series, I’d be happy to read this book again, just a few days after finishing it. The book’s plot is complex and ingenious, and the resolution throws a new light on everything that led up to it. And while elements of the story are grim, it’s not nihilist-bleak; it even ends, literally, on a hopeful note.
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