Corruption and Past Crimes: Blue City (Ross MacDonald)

 Ross MacDonald. Blue City (1947) Another pre-Lew Archer novel, but it has all the motifs and themes that characterise MacDonald’s novels. Johnny Weather, recently discharged from the US Army, goes home hoping to reconcile with his estranged father. Instead, he finds his father’s widow in partnership with a gangster, his father’s murder unsolved, and his father’s erstwhile partner and rival running the town as his personal fiefdom. Small people with big dreams, psychopaths, corrupt police and politicians, people tempted into crime by the nobility of their goals, people striving for the protective amour of respectability, it’s the American Dream turned nightmare.
     McDonald’s style and plotting is still evolving; this book is no page-turner. But it works as a crime novel. A good entertainment for any fan of mid-20th century American crime fiction, and a must for any fan/student of MacDonald. **½