8/18/2023 0 Comments Archy mcnally series in orderIn McNally's Secret, Archie is tasked to quietly find four inverted Jenny stamps stolen from Lady Cynthia Horowitz. When the wealthy want help but don't want the police or the press involved, they go to McNally and Son. Archie is NOT an attorney but head and only person who is in charge of "discrete inquiries" for the law Firms clients. MCNALLY'S SECRET BY LAWRENCE SANDERS is the first in the Archie McNally series and in this humble listener, the best! Archis is the "SON" in Mcnally and Son attorney at law in Palm Beach. THE FIRST OF ARCHIE MCNALLY'S CRAZY CASES! This was so not written in the 90s (at least not by anyone who had been outside of his house in half a century), and I feel cheated that they would think anyone could believe it was! Thankfully, it didn't cost me a credit, and I won't be staggering through this author's time, space and vocabulary continuum again. As to the plot, if you could possibly get over the ridiculous dialogue and lack of a place in chronology, it was weak and forgettable. It literally kept me reeling, not being able to place the action in time or space. But the careless "updating", while maintaining the archaic dialogue and vocabulary made it a linguistic folly. The sad thing was that if this were truthfully presented as a period piece, it could have been charming, if not mind-blowing. Furthermore, being an Irish dandy, he liberally used Yiddish words and expressions, adding confusion to confusion. His favorite expression, annoyingly, was "one never knows, do one?". The songs he liked and heard were 40s songs, the computer he referred to was a 70s computer, and everyone was greeted as "old man" or "old boy", with whom he would have a "spot of lunch". Thrown in to try to "update" the chronology were a Lexus (referred to once), a cell phone (referred to once or twice), a Miata, and not much else. All songs and television shows were of 50ish vintage. There were no contractions in the diction everything was "I am" or "you (or one) will", etc. This preposterous vocabulary had Archy referred to often as a "lad"or "buster", talk was "blather" or "drivel", he said something "diddled" him, bad guys were "villains", "nefarious types", "fiends" and "no-goodnicks", people "decried" things, women were "upholstered", men had a "Barrymore profile", and he wore a "boater" hat. The 30s, 40s.maybe, while wearing a raccoon coat. I can assure you that even an Ivy Leaguer would not speak with such a foppish vocabulary and expressions, even in the 90s. Maybe republished, but the stilted Gatsby-era dialogue and numerous references were waaay before the 90s-maybe the 40s? This author was born in 1920, and the book bears all the hallmarks of someone writing of the 1930s or 40s, with some updated "things" randomly thrown in. Then the references to everything from the 40s to the 90s gave me chronological vertigo. At first, I thought the dialogue of this book was a joke, a farce-in no way serious.
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