Sleeping Beauty

Having just read Sleeping Beauty once again, I find myself perilously close to starting a cycle of rereading all eighteen Lew Archer mysteries. Sleeping Beauty is among the last of the Archer novels, and yet it would serve quite well as starting point for a reader new to Ross MacDonald's private detective. As Lew Archer's flight returns to Los Angeles from Mexico, he looks down upon a large oil spill extending for miles off Pacific Point. That evening along the coast he encounters a young, angry woman attempting to rescue oil-drenched sea birds. Before the night is out, Archer has been employed to rescue the woman herself, thought to have been kidnapped. Her grandfather is the patriarch of the imposing Lennox family, and chairman of the company that is responsible for the spreading oil slick. Lew Archer is essential to MacDonald's mysteries, but not as an action figure. Archer's task is to unravel the psychological complexities that define his clients, the suspects, and the victims. Often the solution to a crime lays in the distant past; later generations sometimes pay severe penalties for old sins. The Lennox family skeletons are many. The plot is complicated and twists unexpectedly as Archer uncovers buried family memories and hidden infidelities, some stretching back to World War II. Tautly told in the manner of a Chandler mystery, Sleeping Beauty is superb detective fiction. Lew Archer is often mentioned in conjunction with Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, and is generally deemed as their natural heir. The respected literary critic and writer, Anthony Boucher, even argued that Ross Macdonald was a better novelist than either Hammett or Chandler. Ross MacDonald was a pseudonym for Kenneth Millar. In the early 1970s Millar and his wife Margaret Millar (also a successful mystery author) helped lead protests following the large oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara. Many of the Archer stories take place in and around Santa Teresa, a fictionalized version of Santa Barbara.

This is a superlative production. Yulin doesn't merely read, he performs, and his voice matches the role. The other parts are nearly all well played, and the music never intrudes. Atmospheric and involving for 9 hours!The book is one of MacDonald's last, and it has some of the overwrought quality that mar his later books, but this is only occasionally a distraction. For those looking for other MacDonalds, the best are The Chill, Far Side of the Dollar, the Zebra-Striped Hearse, The Galton Case (all from 1959-65).

One of the obvious observations about Ross MacDonald's series of Lew Archer detective novels is that they are essentially the same story. Eerily MacDonald's plot lines reflect his own troubled and unsettled childhood. On the surface, this novel is about a very troubled young woman that seems to be in the wrong place at the precisely wrong times. It seems impossible that she could be innocent of anything or everything. Nevertheless, true to MacDonald's plot form, the real villains are the immature adults that compounded their original sins year by year, lie by lie. The true crime always is years in the past in Ross MacDonald's novels. The perpetrator forever spends his or her life covering up the original crime and always enmeshing his or her child into the original felony.Ross MacDonald's prose is simply pure art. He settles you into the tacky 40's through 60's of California and then contrasts the empty lives of the rich and the destitute. He exposes his characters as being very troubled and not very innocent. Archer, his guide/protagonist is dogged as the revelation of the true perpetrator(s) slowly emerges. Terse first person narration gives this novel a stunning sense of realism.This is a really wonderful detective novel, a form of noir that is so special. Vintage Crime/Lizard Press has reissued most of the Archer series and they remain as vital, and entertaining as when they were first printed. I recommend working through the whole series of these wonderful reprints.However, having read them all and having read most of them several times over, this in my opinion is the best by a far measure. The best of this series is perhaps the best of all detective novels. Chandler and Hammett did not have the power of prose that Ross MacDonald so effortlessly spins.

One of Ross MacDonald's better books to begin with. I'm usually not a big fan of audio books - I don't like abridged versions of books, but full versions of books on audio can get monotonous. This dramatic production of Sleeping Beauty is neither. I've listened to this play at least three times and I'm sure I will enjoy it again in the future. I just wish Harris Yulin would put together another cast and produce another Lew Archer novel in this fashion.

Though not the best Ross MacDonald novel, this is certainly one of the best (which places it head and shoulders above nearly all the competition).What is amazing about this audio performance is the exceptional care, expense, and art that went into its creation. Most novels are condensed when put on cassette; nearly all are read by only a single actor or actress. This is read by a large and excellent cast, and the recording company devoted some effort to making the background sounds both realistic and appropriate. The music was simple but quite effective. The acting was sometimes a bit uneven, but the narrator (playing the detective, Lew Archer) was pitch perfect in his role. His voice was the perfect embodiment of the Archer character -- a bit depressed, extremely competent, and at heart a passionate advocate for the good but weak (even if that description does not fit his client).All in all, this is a novel -- and production -- that can be recommended with the greatest enthusiasm (to quote the tag line that professors must place in their letters of reference for graduating students).