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At a party to which he gets himself invited, Archer becomes aware of the tensions in the family, especially after the recent arrival of
Francis Marvell, English author of the play in which Slocum is acting at the local theatre. Also present is Ralph Knudson, the Valley police chief, who only adds to
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Archer now establishes that the corrupt
Detective Sergeant Franks has been working for Walter Kilbourne, owner of the local oil company. In the past the company had surveyed the Slocum property and made a bid for it that had been refused by Olivia. But by the time Archer makes it back to the Slocum
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After meeting an old friend of Maude Slocum's, Archer learns that she had an affair with
Knudson while at university, but they could not marry. When she became pregnant, Maude agreed to marry Slocum, who was a closet homosexual and needed to hide it. When Archer next visits the house, Slocum tells
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When Archer drives away, he gives a lift to Pat Reavis, the
Slocums' fantasist chauffeur, and goes for a drink with him in Nopal Valley. While still in the town, Archer is apprehended and escorted back to the Slocum residence as a murder suspect by the belligerent Detective Sergeant Franks. In his
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sees
Macdonald's eventual signature themes already waiting in the wings. "There is hardly a character in the book without something to hide from his or her past." Seeing the character’s potential, himself, Macdonald commented to his publisher, Alfred Knopf, that "I have an idea that Archer as he
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Kilbourne's wife Mavis now telephones Archer and asks him to meet her at the pier in Quinto. She wants to have her husband arrested for his complicity in the murder of Reavis, but
Kilbourne comes in by speedboat and abducts Archer. Having failed to bribe him to stay silent, Kilbourne turns Archer
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over to his criminal associate
Melliotes to torture him in a private hydrotherapy clinic. Archer barely escapes with his life and locates Mavis there, who in turn shoots Kilbourne, expecting Archer to help her escape to Mexico. Instead he persuades her to turn herself in and plead self-defence.
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above the seedy oil-boom town of Nopal Valley on the other side. Also in the house live Maude's mother-in-law Olivia, who holds the family's financial reins, as well as her effeminate son James, Maude's husband, and their vulnerable teenage daughter Cathy.
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him that he is convinced Maude had murdered his mother. Leaving him to the future care of
Francis Marvell, Archer confronts Cathy, who confesses that she had murdered her supposed grandmother in a muddled attempt to restore family harmony.
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residence, Maude has poisoned herself with strychnine. When
Knudson arrives, Archer tells him that Franks was the informant responsible for the death of Reavis. Knudson threatens to have Archer arrested unless he agrees to drop the case.
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market in this novel, which features a good deal of gratuitous violence, rather than the psychological investigations which later became the speciality of his private investigator, Lew Archer. But in his introduction to a later edition,
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Archer discovers where Reavis has an apartment in Los
Angeles and that his true name is Patrick Ryan, but is caught going through his papers and knocked out. Following a lead, however, he locates Reavis' sister Elaine in
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When Knudson discovers Archer back at the house, the two men fight and Knudson loses. Deciding that too many people have died already, Archer lets Cathy leave for Chicago uncharged and in the care of her real father.
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Archer is hired by Maude Slocum to investigate a libellous letter accusing her of adultery. He begins his enquiry at the Californian town of Quinto, north of
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Tom Nolan, "Claude was doing all right: homosexuality, hard-boiled crime fiction and the evolution of Ross Macdonald",
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was loosely based on the novel but made radical departures from the plot, particularly in moving the location to
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absence, Olivia Slocum had been drowned in her swimming pool, but suspicion finally falls on Reavis instead.
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becomes well known will do quite well for both of us" while measuring his own performance against
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This article is about the Ross Macdonald novel. For the band, see
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16:1950 mystery novel by Ross Macdonald
481:American novels adapted into films
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408:Gay American Novels, 1850-1970
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426:, McFarland & Co., 2017,
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395:Ross Macdonald: A Biography
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454:"Best Mysteries of 1950".
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506:American detective novels
397:, Scribner, 1999, p. 113)
227:in the US and in 1952 by
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23:. For the 1975 film, see
501:Novels set in California
491:Novels by Ross Macdonald
368:Peter Harrington, London
25:The Drowning Pool (film)
198:The Way Some People Die
383:Penguin Classics, 2012
322:University of Michigan
496:Alfred A. Knopf books
343:The later 1975 movie
223:and was published by
476:1950 American novels
424:Murder in the Closet
175:PS3525.I486 D75 1996
486:Lew Archer (series)
406:Drewey Wayne Gunn,
310:Gay American Novels
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290:hardboiled fiction
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379:The Drowning Pool
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