Meet Me at the Morgue

I really enjoyed this audio book. Ross MacDonald may be a bit forgotten today but he is the real successor of Dashiell Hammett and even more so, Raymond Chandler. During his heyday (roughly from the early 1950s until the 1970s) his reputation with readers and critics alike was very high. Meet Me At The Morgue is an early novel and captures the atmosphere of post-war Los Angeles perfectly. Even when the investigator is not Lew Archer and not even a private eye (he is a parole-officer), he follows very much the tracks and MO of MacDonald?s famous sleuth Archer. The plot is complicated but not unlogical and everything ties up nicely in the end, though like all of MacDonald?s work is leans heavily on coincidences and mistaken identities, you accept this or you don't. Unlike Chandler there is always a glimmer of hope in MacDonald?s work, one or two characters go into a brighter future in the last chapter (in Chandler?s work everybody is doomed or corrupt). The main theme of MacDonald?s novels is family and hidden secrets and some dark trails date back to the 1920s and 30s.

Grover Gardner has a very good voice this genre, there is a lot of dialogue in MacDonald?s books, and Gardner handles it well, you know who is talking and he makes it all very real without going to extremes or funny voices.