Word: archer
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...instance, is Archer entirely stable? We have only his word, after all, for the outlandish things that happen during his investigations. Is it really likely that practically every case a detective works on could hinge on a hideous crime committed a generation before, in the presence of a tiny child, who blocks the memory from his consciousness and thus, grown to adulthood, is a psychological time bomb? Wouldn't it be a good idea for Archer to see a shrink...
Another thing, isn't it about time for Macdonald to give Archer another raise? When he began gumshoeing, back in 1949, he made $50 a day, and now he charges $100. It's just not enough. Even if he cracks one case a week, he has to solve 40 cases a year just to make...
Figure that Archer gets hit on the head once every case. Sometimes it's more, sometimes less, but it must average out to at least that. Now that's not only a lot of punishment-Archer must be, what, 50-some?-it's a lot of hospital bills. No wonder he's broke all the time. In Sleeping Beauty he complains about money. He has just about enough to make the rent on his $200-a-month apartment, he says, and pay the office bills, and that's it. What's he going...
Decay. All in character, of course. Archer is as much loser as winner. In his wash-and-wear slacks and sports jacket he shoulders resentfully among the heedless rich and the heedless young who are the villains of Macdonald's recurrent daydream, and ours. Roughly at first, then with a rough man's compassion, he rubs their noses in mortality, the loser's truth. See the proud millionaire grovel, as Archer spades up the moldering past! See the sneering teenager whine, as Archer lays bare the certain decay that lies ahead...
...these satisfactions an occasional confirmation of the law's venality, a whiff of burning plastic as Southern California chars at the edges, and Archer's own pleasurable disillusions, and-for the reader who is unyoung, unrich and undelighted-you have a fantasy very nearly worth 19 reruns. Archer's middle-aged tiredness is the necessary anchor in reality; the reader is not Billy Batson any more, and he will not believe Captain Marvel...