The Far Side of the Dollar

by Ross Macdonald and Ross McDonald

Book Overview

In The Far Side of the Dollar , private investigator Lew Archer is looking for an unstable rich kid who has run away from an exclusive reform school--and into the arms of kidnappers. Why are his desperate parents so loath to give Archer the information he needs to find him? And why do all trails lead to a derelict Hollywood hotel where starlets and sailors once rubbed elbows with two-bit grifters--and where the present clientele includes a brand-new...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679768653
• ISBN13: 9780679768654
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A substantive mystery.

Chapter I of The Far Side of the Dollar finds veteran PI Lew Archer visiting a reform school for rich teenagers. Young Thomas Hillman a recent admission to the facility has gone AWOL and Archer has been hired by the school's headmaster to find him. A fairly straightforward case, right? Wrong. As in all Ross Macdonald novels, the plot becomes ever increasingly intricate as the narrative unfolds. There's plenty of standard Ross Macdonald fare packed into the pages of this very engaging book. Family dysfunction that spans the generations, hidden blood relationships between characters, a young person's journey to claim a birthright heretofore denied as well as jealousy and greed leading to murder most foul. The "readability" of The Far Side of the Dollar is greatly enhanced by its wonderfully insightful descriptive prose. Another very appealling aspect to this novel is the extremely vivid and at times emotionally wrenching way the characters are developed. Highly recommended.

The Far Side of the Dollar: worth every penny

Ross MacDonald infuses eloquence into the lips of his tough detective, Lew Archer. In this mystery, Archer is hired to find the kidnapped son of a couple seriously alienated from one another. The teenage boy has fallen into the wrong hands, partly through his own doing, having run away from a reform school after finding out some startling facts about his background. The mastery the author exhibits as he describes emotions through imagery of the California landscape is poetic and conveys a sense of shattered lives. The reader feels as if the Pacific coast has been transformed into a map of one family's existential angst. This is a powerful mystery worth reading.

MacDonald's masterpiece

Ross MacDonald's (aka Kenneth Millar) Lew Archer novels are probably the greatest modern detective series ever, although the insistence of MacDonald to use the same formulaic elements in his books over and over and over again mean that the novels are better read individually than collectively. With that in mind, The Far Side Of The Dollar is your best bet, as it is the example of MacDonald's formula at its best and most poignant. Other superior Archer novels include The Chill, The Doomsters and The Zebra-Striped Hearse, in addition to the magnificent short story collection The Name Is Archer. Whichever Archer novel you decide to read, make sure to keep a scorecard, because the intricate plots make it hard to keep track of all the various characters and their relationships to one another.

Classic and Consistent

Excellent example of Mac Donald's well honed style. Good character developments as well as excellent one-dimensional character 'vignettes' that serve as observation portholes into the seemy underbelly of society. As for its "monosyllabic tone", that's part of the effect, a la Hemingway. For readers (like the one below) who need long obscure words in EVERY piece of literature, there's always the dictionary...

A Great Classic Mystery

This was the third novel I have read by Ross McDonald and it is my favorite so far. The plot is complex and satisfying and the characters are well developed and three diminsional. What makes this novel stand out is that it is not just a good mystery, but it is also delves fairly deeply into the minds of its characters. It explores the complex relationships between the members of a highly dysfunctional family. All in all, very entertaining.