Volume 23, Number 15 · September 30, 1976
Tough Guys
By Thomas R. Edwards
The Blue Hammer
by Ross Macdonald
Knopf, 270 pp., $7.95
The Family Arsenal
by Paul Theroux
Houghton Mifflin, 309 pp., $8.95
It's hard for sophisticated people to like something simple without overrating it, as the case of Ross Macdonald shows. Like those of his masters, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Macdonald's 'tough' detective stories have been getting considerable attention and praise from serious readers, and, though I've read all twenty of the Lew Archer novels, most of them more than once, I'd recommend more caution in judging them. Even an addict can see that they follow a formula, are unevenly written and less than convincing in their efforts at social and psychological commentary. Yet the genre itself still pleases, and if a good and imaginative thriller like Paul Theroux's The Family Arsenal puts a piece of routine tough stuff like The Blue Hammer in its place as literature, it's clear that they have something important in common.
Review, 2773 words
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