A Secret Passion For Mercy

Justice as blood, agony and revenge came up in William Goldman’s MARATHON MAN a week or so ago, but Ross Macdonald’s private detective Lew Archer offers a rather different take in THE GOODBYE LOOK. To wit:

  “That isn’t your real motivation,” [she said]. “I know your type. You have a secret passion for justice. Why don’t you admit it?”
  “I have a secret passion for mercy,” I said. “But justice is what keeps happening to people.”

  Mercy isn’t a quality we usually associate with the crime / mystery / thriller genre, but it’s probably why Ross Macdonald is one of the enduring greats, and why he is considered a superior – or more sophisticated, at least – writer when compared to his predecessors, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
  I still hold a candle for Chandler, but maybe that’s because I’ve read virtually everything Chandler wrote and I’ve only read four or five of Macdonald’s novels so far.
  Tobias Jones had a very nice piece on Ross Macdonald in the Guardian way back in 2009, in which he writes about the evolution of Macdonald as a writer, from being a disciple of Hammett and Chandler to outstripping both in terms of his ambition for the private detective novel. He also quotes Macdonald on plot:

“It should be as complex as contemporary life, but balanced enough to say true things about it. The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.”

  The full piece is here …

Here Come The GIRLS

Crikey, there’s no stopping Squire Declan Hughes. ALL THE DEAD VOICES hasn’t so much as been nominated for a triumvirate of awards (lest we forget, THE DYING BREED, aka THE PRICE OF BLOOD, is up for a Shamus at B'con next month), and already his new novel is ready to go. The fifth in the Ed Loy series is called THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS, and finds Loy back where it all began – for Loy, certainly, but also for Loy’s spiritual ancestors, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer – for what sounds like a wandering sisters job. To wit:

In LA there’s a killer on the loose. He kills young and rootless girls and he always kills in threes. Back in Dublin, Ed Loy, happy in a new relationship, is reunited with Jack Donovan, a film director friend from LA with a turbulent personal history. When the third young female extra fails to show for work on Jack’s movie, Loy begins to suspect Jack. And when the previous victims of the ‘Three-in-One Killer’ are discovered in LA at locations Jack used for his movies, Loy’s suspicion hardens.
  Loy flies to LA to liaise with the LAPD on their investigation. He must find something in his and Jack’s shared past that can point to the killer, and hope against hope that whatever he finds will point away from his old friend.
  And then, when he finally unearths the truth, it looks like it may be too late. Back in Dublin, the ‘Three-in-One Killer’ has broken his pattern, broken cover and struck at Ed Loy where he is most vulnerable. Time is not on Loy’s side as he mounts a desperate fight to outwit a ruthless psychopath and save the last of the lost girls …

  Don’t know about you, but my money’s on the boy Loy. He’s a hardy one, that Ed …

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

The third volume in Declan Hughes’ Ed Loy series, THE DYING BREED (aka THE PRICE OF BLOOD, which follows on from THE COLOUR OF BLOOD and THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD), hits a bookshelf near you on April 3rd, and the ever-lovely people at William Morrow are offering to give away an advance copy to three Crime Always Pays readers (of which, happily, there are only three). Quoth the blurb elves:

Even the best private eye needs more than a name to find a missing person, but that’s all that Father Vincent Tyrrell, the brother of prominent racehorse trainer FX Tyrrell, will offer Loy when he comes to him for help. A dwindling bank account convinces Loy to delve into the deadly underworld of horse racing, but fortune soon smiles on him: while working another case, he discovers a phone number linked to FX on a badly beaten body left at an illegal dump. Loy’s been around long enough to know that there’s more to the Tyrrell family than meets the eye -- and then a third body appears. At Christmastime, on the eve of one of Ireland’s most anticipated racing events, the intrepid investigator bets his life on a long shot: finding answers in a shady network of trading and dealing, gambling and breeding.

To be in with a chance of winning a free copy of THE DYING BREED, just answer the following question:

Is Ed Loy:
(a) distressingly obsessed with blood;
(b) not in the slightest bit obsessed with blood, but it with he;
(c) Lew Archer with a perpetual hangover?

Answers to dbrodb(at)gmail.com, putting ‘One Declan is a coincidence but two is rather unfortunate’ in the subject line, and including your address in the body text, before noon on Tuesday, March 18. Et bon chance, mes amis …