Ross Macdonald has never written bet ter. “I felt absolutely ghastly when the house burned,” a brittle, new‐rich socialite will soon be heard to remark. As Archer approaches the site of the crime, over leaves “so dry it was like walking on cornflakes,” a fire started by the murdered man's dropped cigarillo is already sweeping out of control through the suburban hills above the city of Santa Teresa. As the boy catches peanuts tossed by the middle‐aged private detective, “the jays were all around him like chunks of broken sky.” Within a few hours of this open ing scene, the sky has begun to fall in earnest: the child's father is dead, with blisters on his hands from digging the hole in which his corpse is found, and the little boy Who was with him has been spirited away by a pair of disturbed teenagers, who don't behave like kidnapers. They're not big enough.” The child is encouraged by that odd, quiet answer - though the reader is not. He's joined by a little boy who wants to know if the squabbling jays are killing each other, and is assured they're not.
On a Saturday morning in September, Lew Archer feeds peanuts to bluejays swooping down into the yard of his West Los Angeles apartment building.
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