The Chill

⚖The case for it

A runaway-bride job turns into two deaths twenty years apart, and Macdonald moves Archer between a California college town, Chicago and Reno without the escalation ever feeling staged. The supporting cast is the achievement: an ex-convict, a psychiatrist, a college dean, a retired detective, each with real psychology rather than a suspect’s slot. The subject underneath is how much of a family’s damage outlives the people who caused it. Readers say the ending is fairly clued and they missed it anyway, “stunning in its simplicity and cleverness.” Against Chandler the prose is “not as showy, but more precise.” One critic: “the finest jewel in Macdonald’s crown.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The cast outgrows the reader: names interconnect until it is “very difficult to keep track of the multitude of names,” and one reader concludes “you’ll need a scorecard.” Characters stonewall Archer for no reason anyone can identify, which makes the interrogation scenes repeat rather than tighten. The dialogue goes flat in places, called “some of the worst cardboard dialogue I’ve ever heard.” Macdonald has no quotable lines the way Chandler and Hammett do. Some readers give up tracking the connections partway and coast on atmosphere. Others rank it “not the best in the series.”

— the honest librarian

5h

honest hours

7

sittings