My FIL gave me a copy of one of the Archy McNally mysteries, and I’m pretty hooked now. I’ve tried reading a couple of his other books, The Case of Lucy Bending and Guilty Pleasures, but I gave up, somewhat sickened. In the first book, everyone was either having sex or wanting to have sex, even the 8 year old girls, and in the second book, the college graduate daughter climbs into bed with Daddy Dear after graduation. Ick ick ick.
But the Archy books are pretty good, and I’m a wee bit sad that Archy will never settle down with Connie, or that he’ll never get over his fear of his father, or that Binky will ever get a clue. I know Sanders died a few years ago, and that a ghostwriter wrote some more McNally mysteries…are they as good?
The Archy books are OK, but I started with “The First Deadly Sin” and thought it was great. There were some others in the series, maybe 2 or 3, don’t remember. The “Lucy Bending” book and others he’s written were not very enjoyable to me.
Yeah, I read Lucy Bending years ago. Very well written and engaging, but yikes! I have to say that even thought that was more than 15 years ago, I still remember it fairly vividly, and think about it occasionally. That’s the sign of a good book – to me.
The “Deadly Sin” series is good, as are the “Commandent” series. Am I remembering that right? Isn’t there a series called “The First Commandment” and “The Second Commandment” and so on?
“The Anderson Tapes” is good. It’s older, and a bit dated now, technology-wise, but it was a fun read.
“Caper” was good.
The Arch McNally books wore kind thin after a while, IMO. I don’t think I’ve read any of the ghost-written ones.
Stick with his older books.
If the parts you read sickened you, you’d be even more disgusted by the ending…
As I recall, there was a party going on at one of the neighbor’s and one of the pig men went over to the little girl’s house, since everyone was out. They were in the kitchen, him standing and her on her knees sucking his dick when someone (I can’t recall who) came in, found them and SHOT THEM BOTH! UnFUCKINGbelieveable.
I have never read a more vile and disgusting book than that. I tried his “Original Sins” books, but the overly-descriptive violence and gore was just not appealing to me. I kept wondering what kind of fucked up sick bastard could even think up these things. I have no use for Lawrence Sanders.
You’ve probably hit on his two worst books. The Deadly Sin and the Commandment serieses (serii?) are classics of the procedural mystery genre. Everyone should read the The First Deadly Sin. It’s a terrific book.
The two Tangent books are also very good. The McNally books are fun, if somewhat lighter than his earlier work.
If you didn’t like Lucy Bending, you should probably stay away from The Seduction of Peter S.
ivylass, I also enjoyed the McNally books – light mysteries that are pretty fun. As for the ones written by the ghostwriter (Vincent Lardo), I started to read the first of them (McNally’s Dilemma), but I never finished it. Perhaps I’ll go back and try it again, but it just didn’t have the same feel to it – the characters weren’t quite “themselves”.
For example, he seemed to be portraying Prescott McNally as being more of a money-grubbing lawyer that was primarily interested in “billable hours”. I never got that impression of the father in the real ones (written by Sanders, that is). The premise of this one seemed like a workable plot, but the characters just weren’t quite ringing true.
One of these days I’ll probably go back and try that one again, and maybe another of the ghost-written ones, to give it a chance. But at the moment, there are plenty of other titles in my “to be read” queue.
Read all the ones with Edward X Delaney, which I believe are the Deadly Sin books. He’s a great character, but don’t read these books on an empty stomach. There are some incredible sandwiches in there. Another of his liked a bunch was called something like The Timothy Files, about an insurance investigator named Timothy. I haven’t liked the others of his I’ve read quite as much for reasons noted above, rather extreme sex and violence, which doesn’t really bother me usually. For some reason, they didn’t work for me. The McNally books were like literary cotton candy, easy and fast to devour, but nothing left.
and Daddy Times TwoThe Timothy Files is a great book. It was my first exposure to Sanders and drew me into his work. I wish Ivylass and Shayna had read about Timothy Cone instead of Lucy Bending, then they might be hooked, too.
