This was an interesting story. Howard Cross, a probation officer, is a different hero from Macdonald’s usual detective, Lew Archer, but Cross still reminded me in some ways of Archer: they both give vibes of quiet and philosophical, not inclined to violence unless really pushed to it. I didn’t guess how this would all unravel but I quite enjoyed it. The ending was perhaps a bit sappier or cheesier than an Archer story, but I rolled with it because this is a stand-alone novel. You could probably read this without having read other works by Macdonald, because there are no references to Archer. ( )

review of
Ross MacDonald's Meet Me at the Morgue
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 21, 2021

I continue on my Ross MacDonald spree (thx to the generosity of Caliban Books). Maybe he's the Holy Ghost of that Unholy Trilogy of the Father, Dashiell Hammett; the Son, Raymond Chandler; &, now, MacDonald. Every new thing that I read by him impresses me more & more w/ his craft & his psychology. This one's from 1953, the yr I was born, & isn't a Lew Archer novel. It has the novel device of a 2pp "Cast of Characters" at the beginning that includes the crime-solving protagonist, Howard Cross, a probation officer no less. There're hints of trouble almost immediately:

"The boy scampered back to the Jaguar and dove head first over the low door. The last I saw of him was a thin denim behind and a pair of kicking mocassins."

[..]

""Hold it a minute. What's up?"

""There's nothing up," he answered woodenly.

""The boy said you were going on a trip. You're not leaving the country?"

""No, I'm not going anywhere." He was a long time answering." - p 3

The man answering the questions is on probation. Why is explained:

""He isn't alcoholic. He simply got drunk, as a lot of people do, and killed a man. Don't waste your sympathy on him, because he's been lucky. His wife stayed with him. His boss stood by him. If it wasn't for that, and his war record, Miner would be in jail."" - p 6

An apparent childnapping happens & Cross explains his philosophy to the mother he's trying to help:

""I'll put it another way. The criminal is at war with society. Society fights back through cops and prisons. I try to act as a neutral arbitrator. The only way to end the war is to make some kind of peace between the two sides."

""I'm not a service-club luncheon," she flared out. "Is that how you feel about this case? Neutral?"

""Hardly. There's no probation on a kidnapping conviction. It carries the death penalty, and I think it should. On the other hand, I feel as you do, it's dangerous to jump to conclusions. My office helped to keep Fred Miner out of jail, and I may be prejudiced. But I don't think he's the type. It takes a cruel mind to plan and execute a kidnapping."" - p 18

This probation officer is a non-nonsense kindof a guy:

""Ann Devon's my favorite young woman."

""Mine, too. In my book she's the complete darling. But even the best of them let their emotions get out of kilter now and then. They can never understand that business is business. They want to make everything into a personal issue."

""A lot of things are."

""Come on now," he said heartily, "let's have a little masculine solidarity here."

"I didn't smile." - p 25

& suspicious:

""Nothing like that. You'd think the guy deliberately wiped out his own identity."

""Did you see him?"

""Yes, I took a look at him in the morgue." Seifel's gaze turned inward. "I've seen prettier sights. There wasn't much left of his face. The fog-lamp smashed right into it as he fell.["]" - p 26

&, of course, there's at least 1 more dead person:

"A man reclined on the front seat half covered by a brown topcoat. His head was jammed into the corner between the right-hand door and the back of his seat, his legs twisted under the steering wheel. When I opened the door a brown toupe detached itself from his skull and draped itself across the toe of my shoe. From the side of his neck the red plastic handle of an icepick stood out like a terrible carbuncle." - p 40

Yes, it was the toupe that committed the murders. It's a good thing Cross was wearing steel-toed loafers or he wd've been a goner. It doesn't justify his obnoxiousness tho:

""Stop that thing," he said in a high-pitched voice. "I refuse to talk for the record."

""So you can change your story later on, when you've had more time to think? What's the matter, Seifel? You've got me half convinced that you're involved—"

""I could sue you for that!" He glared at the whirling spools. "If you play that tape with the accusation on it to one or more persons, you're actionable under the libel laws. I advise you to wipe it off."

""It's not recording yet. You have to press this button."" - p 60

MacDonald seems to present a wide variety of oppressive parental types in various bks. Here it's the mother of one of the suspects:

""I'm sorry, Mother."

""Indeed you should be sorry. You forced me to take a public bus down here."

""You could have taken a taxi."

""I can't afford to pay taxi-fare every day. You never think of my sacrifices, of course, but it cost me an enormous amount of money to set you up in practice with Mr. Sturtevant."" - p 68

Ha ha! How many of us know someone like this? Obviously she chose to take the bus just so she cd complain about it. Furthermore, she didn't need to take a taxi every day - just this one time when her son was late.

"She left me in a room with a heavily beamed ceiling and book-lined walls. Many of the books were beautifully bound, but they looked as if they had never been read. Someone had probably bought them all at once, stacked them in cases because the room required them, and then forgotten them." - p 91

As a former bkstore owner I can attest that such things really do happen.

The oasises of description are always juicy:

"There were human sounds behind the walls and doors, sounds of unquiet slumber, alcoholic laughter, furtive love. I was tired enough to feel the weight of lives pressing from both sides on the narrow hallway. For a nightmare instant I felt infinitely tiny, a detached cell threading the veins of a giant, tormented body." - p 112

They tried gassing the toupe, it lived on; they tried electrocuting it, it lived on, they tried a lethal injection, it lived on; they tried hanging it, it lived on. They had to microwave it. ( )

This was rather fun. Instead of Archer, we have Howie Cross, who is a probation officer. He runs into one of his clients, Fred Miner. Miner had dropped by to talk to Cross’ partner, but even though the partner wasn’t in, he didn’t want to talk to Cross as back up. He had a four-year old with him, one Jamie Johnson, the son of a rich man, Abel Johnson and his young wife, Helen. Fred Miner was chauffeur for Abel and Helen Johnson.

Well, next thing you know, the Johnson’s get a ransom note saying Jamie had been kidnapped. The thinking was that Fred Miner might have been the kidnapper. Well, there’s all kinds of convoluted relationships, as is generally the case with Ross Macdonald novels, at least the Archer ones. Anyway, eventually Howie figures things out, rather in the way of a normal detective I suppose, but not until several bodies show up along the way.

We’re GoodReads to allow and -, this would get a *** . I’m a bit on the fence as to whether or not just to give it 4*.

( )

*Partial spoilers ahead*

This was my first experience with the author's non-Lew Archer novels. It takes several chapters for Macdonald to establish probation officer Howard Cross as the book's authoritative voice, but once the wheels get rolling there's no essential difference between Cross and Archer. (The PO is a little more awkward than Macdonald's classic private eye: there's an interesting scene in which, hovering on the brink of exhaustion, he allows a female suspect to get the jump on him and spends a hair-raising moment looking down the barrel of his own gun. It's something that probably wouldn't happen to Archer, but such mishaps make Cross feel believably human to the reader.) A four-year-old boy has been kidnapped; the lead suspect is an ex Navy man who works as a chauffeur for the boy's wealthy parents and was responsible for a hit-and-run accident several months earlier. While attempting to track down his probationer, Cross encounters a cast of broken and often dangerous characters who will be familiar to the seasoned Macdonald fan.

The Warner/Grand Central paperback edition from 1991 is loaded with typos, but you get used to them as the story begins to carry you along. Three and a half stars. ( )

Fantastic novel with a cheap-sounding title. ( )