First some quick background. “Strangers in Town” was written in 1950, with Macdonald planning to submit it to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He withdrew it, however, so that he could expand it into a novel, which turned out to be The Ivory Grin. He also recycled parts of it into the story “Gone Girl.” The original story itself was only published posthumously in 2001 when his biographer, Tom Nolan, discovered it among Macdonald’s papers.

Judged on its own it’s a pretty good story. Things start off with a woman coming to Archer to see if he can clear her son of a murder rap. He’s Black, you see, the victim is a white woman, and things don’t look good. Then there are some of the usual elements, like the way the murder investigation turns into a missing person case, and the trip to the big house where Archer gets roughed up by a powerful figure who doesn’t like him snooping around. Archer again moves quickly (the case only takes about 24 hours of frantic driving back and forth) with the action culminating in a rush of information at the end where you have to force yourself to slow down to make sure it all makes sense.

You can see why Macdonald thought there was more in it though. We don’t get to know the characters as well as we feel we should (Dr. Benning in particular), and what we’re mainly left with are descriptive flourishes such as the elderly gangster’s two day’s beard having the appearance of “motheaten gray plush” and his eyes looking “like thin stab-wounds filled with watery blood.” Who needs the movies with writing like that?

Archer index