Ross Macdonald, The Underground Man (1973).
Good Reads meta-data is 288 pages rated 3.94 by 2419.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: The Best.
Tagline: It’s hot!
Lew Archer’s humane instincts put him in the middle of a martial dispute when feeding pigeons, while waiting for a bus, he shares his peanuts with a small boy. Soon he is in the crossfire between a loutish father and a battered mother as they quarrel over the boy. Knowing he should walk away, Archer does not.
Ever the loner himself, Archer wants to help this broken family and so the inner knight errand mounts his faithful dusty blue Ford sedan and sets forth. Once in, it’s all in for Archer. As he goes to and fro, asking questions against the background of a raging wildfire like a conquering army pounding and destroying all in its path slowly approaching the city.
While the prose is spare the metaphors are rich (albeit sometimes too rich and forced) as Archer moves through the body politic of SoCal – noir in the sunshine, indeed. Once broken, families repeat that break through the generations it seems. The title should be ‘Men’ not ‘Man.’ Much of the action stems from fragile masculine egos.
The people he questions seldom want to talk about the most important things. The façade of normality is just that, a screen.
***
I sometimes think Macdonald is THE krimi writer. One critic said he wrote the same story twenty-five times in varying ways. Each time with more depth, insight, or empathy. It was story about a broken family.