A review by downloadnapster
The Drowning Pool by Ross MacDonald

4.0

at this point I'm trying to read these in order so I went back to #2. this one is fucking crazy. it felt like there was dramatically more action than the others I've read and way more disjointed near the end. starts off normal, archer is really passive aggressive with some closeted gay playwright and his wife because he suddenly has strong onions about theater as an artform and how this guy's play sucks then another guy starts using Italian racial slurs and is doused in gasoline and lit on fire in an unrelated incident and then archers out on a boat talking to a james bond villain and then he's getting tortured at a hydrotherapy clinic by harley quinn who I don't really think is really introduced as a character at all before that scene and then archer solves the crime he was hired to, that was almost entirely unrelated from the vast criminal conspiracy he's been unraveling over the last 3/4ths of the book, and says, "The happy endings and the biggest oranges were the ones that California saved for export" in a 1950s guy voice and its over.