This is another proto-Lew Archer story where the detective’s name was changed, by Macdonald himself, from Sam Drake to Lew Archer for publication in the aptly titled collection The Name Is Archer. It’s a long story that feels rushed in not being a novel. And when Macdonald feels rushed you know things are moving quickly. I think all of the action here takes place in under 24 hours, and it involves Archer visiting multiple locations, some several times, one fist fight (which Archer wins because there’s just no time for him to take another whupping and have to recover), and the discovery of two murdered bodies. I’ve mentioned elsewhere how the sheer amount of running around in an Archer novel is enough to make your head spin and “The Bearded Lady” is very much the same way. It’s like Archer needs to keep moving in order to think.

You get a double dose of other what-would-become-standard elements too. There’s not just one big house to visit but two: one the home of the Colonel – or wait, he’s an Admiral this time – and the other the fortress of a shady crime boss who is crippled in some grotesque way. The plot revolves around Archer trying to figure out who killed an old war buddy he’d come to San Marcos to visit, but there’s also a stolen Chardin to find. That would be the painter Jean Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), which is something anyone who could read was presumed to know in 1948. And finally there are the twisted family dynamics. The way it works is all here in embryo: the no-good trophy mother-in-law (oversexed, alcoholic, “raddled with passion”) and the dangerously sexy daughter who is pretty poison to all the men she meets. At least I think she’s supposed to be sexy. How would you take a description of a girl who “filled her tailored suit like sand in a sack”? Is that a compliment?

It all goes by in a rush and I enjoyed every page of it. Though I did have to go back and re-read parts to understand what was actually going on. When Archer visits the crime boss’s mansion he’s taken to a library where “the walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling – the kind of books that are bought by the set and never read.” The boss is only a collector, you see. Is he ever going to take that Chardin out of his wall safe? Probably not. But some of us do read books by the set, so my notes on the Archer files will continue.

Archer index