Sleeping Beauty

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Production Nearly Redeems Dull Mystery
Review: But not quite. While I wouldn't say this was a terrible novel, I also wouldn't say that it was in any way memorable. Because of the wonderful dramatization on the audio cassette, I passed an afternoon at work more pleasantly, being entertained by the acting skills of the readers. However, if I'd been merely reading a text version of this story, I wouldn't have finished it because the plot did not interest me enough to deserve my full attention. The characters are too typical of a mystery novel, the prose style unremarkable, and the ending not too exciting.

Rating:
Summary: A great production done in the style of a radio play
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Ross MacDonald's Best
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Ross MacDonald's Best
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Detective Fiction with an Environmental Edge
Review: The action in SLEEPING BEAUTY is dominated by a devastating oil spill that threatens the coastline off Pacific Point, California. PI Lew Archer first catches sight of the spill from the air as he is flying back to LA from Mazatlan: "It lay on the blue water ... in a free-form slick that seemed miles wide and many miles long. An offshore oil platform stood up out of its windward end like the metal handle of a dagger that had stabbed the world and made it spill black blood." Archer is so shaken by what he has seen that, instead of driving directly home, he retrieves his car and heads for the coast. Walking along the beach he happens upon a young woman, Laurel Lennox, whose family owns the ruptured well. In a poignant scene, Archer interrupts Laurel as she is futilely attempting to rescue a small bird that has been covered with oil. Later, when a despondent Laurel leaves Archer's apartment with a bottle of sleeping pills, he has no choice but to go looking for her. Archer's search, which (ostensibly) turns out to be a kidnapping recovery, enmeshes him in a web of jealousy and greed that stretches back twenty-five years through three murders and yet another disaster, a fire on a naval vessel off Okinawa in 1945.

The environmental motif that surfaces in MacDonald's earlier novel, THE UNDERGROUND MAN, becomes the central unifying element in SLEEPING BEAUTY. Here, the oil spill itself becomes a potent symbol for the mysterious and anachronistic way in which the past continues to exert an almost occult influence on the present. Indeed, the characters in this novel all desire either to hide from or to exploit the past in some fashion. MacDonald uses the oil spill to demonstrate just how perilous it is to attempt to orchestrate one or the other of those results. The muck and ooze of our lives, the alluvial deposit of our past, he seems to be saying, must be owned up to on its own terms. It must, in other words, be integrated into the present or it too will begin seeping disastrously around the edges of whatever artifice we have contrived to contain it. A member of the Lennox family seems to intuit just that when she remarks, "It's a recurring theme. Other people burn their bridges ... we do things on a grander scale in our family. We burn ships and spill oil. It's the all-American way."

SLEEPING BEAUTY is a rich and rewarding story. Nevertheless, it is unlikely to appeal to aficionados of more traditional hardboiled fare. Such readers will undoubtedly find the narrative rather dull and plodding. Archer's unrelenting investigation into and preoccupation with the moral and psychological basis for America's ambivalence toward the past and our culture's sometimes callous attitude toward nature will probably be appreciated only by dyed-in-the-wool MacDonald fans. (James Clar - MYSTERY NEWS).


Rating:
Summary: Best audio book I've heard
Review: 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).

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Production Nearly Redeems Dull Mystery
Review: 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).

Rating:
Summary: A very good novel, presented with extraordinary care and art
Review: 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).