When Sheila Sharp Became The New Sheriff In Town -One Last Tidbit On The Fate Of Famed California Private Detective Lew Archer -Out Of Sorts With His Times

When Sheila Sharp Became The New Sheriff In Town -One Last Tidbit On The Fate Of Famed California Private Detective Lew Archer -Out Of Sorts With His Times  

By Seth Garth

[Over the past few years I have spent plenty of cyber-ink on the rise and fall of 1950s California private detective Lew Archer who as it turned out only recently died in 2019, a fact which surprised me and started me rethinking what I had done about him in the past. That work is pretty well documented in a few pieces published recently (as well as the earlier work).

One of the points that I made constantly, and which applies here as well is the role Sheila Sharp played in trying to get Lew back on his feet once he started crashing and thrashing around on cases letting the body counts get out of hand. At a point when it was clear to everybody in California that Lew was a has-been, had fallen down she offered him, and he accepted repo and key-hole peeping work from her agency in San Francisco. That work the lowest of the low in the profession at least kept him in coffee and cakes, kept him in touch with the profession. After a while though he screwed up royally on a repo case where he grabbed the wrong guy and the wrong car and Sheila had all she could do to fix the mess up. That and the hard fact that the key-hole peeping business which centered on getting enough adulterous dirt on somebody for the client to get a divorce dried with the increase in no-fault divorces and a lightening up of the divorce laws in most jurisdictions.

It is not clear why Sheila had a soft spot for Lew (although her Boston copper father had worked with Lew on a couple of cases the few times he headed east) but she kept him on as the office go-fer. You know take the coffee and orders, lunch stuff like that. Kept on until she found out he was hanging around with notorious junkie private eye Kenny Millar, working as his bag man. Worse starting to get a little horse habit and spiraling down even further grabbing the petty case dough meant for coffee and stuff. She gave him a fast boot then.

But enough of the Sharp-Archer connection because what I want to discuss today is how new private detective style Sheila prospered in her time when the whole profession was moving away from male hard-boiled stuff, the stuff Lew grew up with and could not shake when things changed.]  

Like a lot of private dicks Sheila started with the public coppers (as mentioned above her father was a Boston copper which smoothed the way for her*), got tired of the police bureaucracy runaround and general bullshit and decided to go private. She had a few missing person’s cases which she solved, at least the ones who did not really want to stay missing and a few ordinary trace the theft and recover cases from private parties. Par for the course starting out. What got her off the humdrum heap was hammering the Doyle case which included murder, craziness and guns not necessarily in that order. That case is also instructive not only because he set her on a path to eventually become the first female member of the P.I. Hall of Fame but about the dramatic change in style and working habits the 1970s and later brought with them.      

(*Sheila is not going to lie this although we have talked about it before on many occasions but her father Frank was such a crooked cop he needed somebody to help him put his pants on. Sheila idolized her father and either never knew or never wanted to know what Frank was really like. I knew him a little from guys I grew up with who had become lawyers in Boston who had to deal with him when they were looking for parking stickers. Those were supposed to be freely given when available for businesses and professionals who needed spaces on an on-going basis. Frank strong-armed his way to a thou per for the privilege of parking on the streets of Boston.

Sheila is really not going to like this but beyond the traditional graft and pay-offs from gangsters and others Frank had a little “collection” racket going. In the 1980s, the time of troubles in Ireland, many bars and other establishments in Irish neighborhoods like Southie and Dorchester would have a bowl or a box located in some prominent location but with no designation on it. Guys would stop by and throw a few dollars or whatever they had in and that was that. The cause was to aid the boyos in the North, the IRA guys, in their struggles against the bloody British. Frank would come on say late Friday afternoon and “skim” his share from the pile. Of course the owners weren’t going to squawk since he was “protecting” their various operations. If they had known though I bet more than a few longshoremen and other hefty types would have had their noses bent out of joint and done something about it. The late Frank Sharp was certainly not one of nature’s noblemen.)

Sheila when she told me the Doyle case mentioned that she had been having an affair with one of the Doyle sons, Richard. This is important because what happened was that he was target number one in what turned out to be an old-fashioned powerplay ethnic rivalry between the Irish and Italian bad guys who ran the various illegal operations in southern New England. The way she got involved was that this Richard was supposed to be out of the line of fire, was supposed to be kept clear of his family’s “businesses. Somebody broke what was essentially an armed truce by taking on Richard, a couple of his uncles Fritz and Freddie , a few of Desmond’s (his father) employees and assorted flak-catchers.

Nobody could figure out why until somebody told Sheila to look for the money trail, look to what the Doyles were spending their hard cash on to make even more cash. Naturally it turned up to be illegal, illegally gathering up every available stock of guns on the East Coast. For starters though guns were supposed to be under Italian control according to Richie Rizzo, the kingpin of that crowd (not Mafia but close). Still blowing away a bunch of Irish guys when some arrangement could be made didn’t stack up. Sheila sensed something more was at play-something that was superheating the ethnic rivalry thing. Of course this had to about women, about sex but in an odd way.      

Nobody can blame an Irish guy for not chasing the Irish colleens with their stiff white shirts, their rosary beads in hand and their Bible between their knees. What the tow bad ass Doyle brothers, Desmond and Freddie did though was fall, fall hard for a beautiful Italian dish and do something about it, at least one of them. That doing something about it meant having sex and having a child with that woman. An unknown child of sorts in that nobody knew that the kid had grown up to be a gangster with a serious grievance on his shoulders about being abandoned by his fucking Irish dad.  

Put guns and grievances together and you get a possible war without end-except here is where Sheila really did learn a few lessons at the police academy. If you want to roll up a hard ass gangster with a serious piece of weaponry in his hands then hire a hitman, hire Vinnie Morris if you can get him, can afford the gaff. He wasted the sullen kid without working up a sweat. Saved the day for Sheila and Richard too. Then it was up to Desmond and Rickie Rizzo to figure out the gun monopoly and go back to that armed truce that had held so long  

     

The Case That Turned A Once Famous California P.I Lew Archer Into A Has-Been-The Road Down To Skid Road Aint That Far-The Spinner Case

The Case That Turned A Once Famous California P.I Lew Archer Into A Has-Been-The Road Down To Skid Road Aint That Far-The Spinner Case   

By Seth Garth

Hold the presses! Or maybe that is what I should have done when I learned that there was a smaller previous case by the once famous California P.I. Lew Archer who died at 104 recently found head down in a toilet seat in a Bunker Hill (L.A.) skid row rooming house of a drug overdose, heroin. I spent considerable cyber-ink laying out the facts of what I have called the Jameson case, the late 1950s case that set Lew on his ass, got him rolling downhill. Of course all of this including the verifiable facts left remaining after fifty-plus years was subject to some serious holes although on the basics that case can still provide argument for the definitive slide. But with this new information gathered from the archives of his last boss, the sleaze ball junkie P.I. Kenny Millar who got Lew hooked on junk for good it appears we now have the Spinner case that shows in light detail where Lew was heading and why. Moreover the case has the central virtue of having been worked on very shortly after Lew’s ex-wife Martha heaved him out of the house and took everything he had including his vaunted sexual prowess which is what led to the toss in the first place.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse but that sexual prowess/impotency angle really does play a major role in the big fall down here so it bears a short analysis of its own. (The other major points you can gather in from the Jameson case if interested.) Every serious male private eye from about Sherlock Holmes, no, bad example, since we have discovered via Will Bradley of this publication that he and Doc Watson were, well lovers, unofficial husband and husband in today’s terms, let’s try Philo Vance. Every serious male private dick since Philo Vance has had the mandatory frail or seven hanging off his every arm as a sign that not only will he solve the case before him no matter how high the bodies stack up but is manly enough for the tasks at hands, including in bed. So Lew in a way really was a victim of his times, or the far edge of his times when he had to compete with reputations like Sam’s who thought nothing of sending some dishy dame over when it looked like she had him set for the fall guy, like Phil who specialized in sisters and multiples, Phil Larkin for the young ones, Lance Larson for the wealthy not too old widow set and so on.

Lew had married Martha his high school sweetheart before he went into Military Intelligence in World War II and things were fine until after the war when he decided to set up a private investigation operation on his own. Naturally after winning a few high-profile cases that were the beginnings of his bigtime reputation he needed to have his share of twists hanging off of him, serious or just one night, hell, maybe one afternoon, stands and be done with it. Just as naturally that did not set well with his ever -loving Martha who was no stranger to beauty herself. According to her when I interviewed her for a piece in the early 1970s for the whys of the fall of Lew Archer the last straw was when he would start hanging around with what looked like underaged girls. Started taking only cases when some young fluff was on display. That led to the toss (the final toss there were a couple of earlier bumps around that same issue). Out on his ear Lew realized as much as he loved having dames hanging on him his rock was Martha and without that rock he was in trouble. That would not stop him from pursuing young fluff-inspired cases but we now know what happened to Lew when any woman, young, old or indifferent put the moves on him. Nada. The newly found Spinner case can serve as a primer of the way down for formerly promising Lew Archer, a cinch to make the P.I. Hall of Fame on his first try.         

A first glance of the archives at U/Cal-Irvine’s School of Criminology where all the serious cold cases and hot wind up to provide teachable moments my impression was that there were too many moving parts to the case itself, that maybe Lew should have, given his emotional frailty at the time passed on this one. The old now seriously yellowed newspaper articles from the period list a bewildering number of interconnections between a small group of people none of whom I would not turn my back on for one minute. The tapes, all old-fashioned six of them digitally remastered for the archives, tell an even more horrendous tale of evil and treachery almost on a   daily basic for a number of years. Of course, the nexus was the money, the knee-deep oil money which once Lew was in kept the bodies started piling up, that Lew let the case get away from him.      

         

This is where the aging Lew’s sexual appetites for younger and sometimes underage women got the best of him, at least that is where he thought the deal was heading. Seems that some lower level hedge fund manager’s high school daughter had flown the coop with, Danny, Danny Spinner, some bad ass doper, con artist, psycho who will really be the link to all the craziness in the case but that is the side fluff since Lew had a photograph of the young damsel and was ready to get the lances out on that inspection. Here is what is weird though right from the get-go when Lew went to that hedge fund manager’s house he was greeted at the door by his wife, a knockout who went straight at Lew with her come hither look-all to cut the tariff, to cut Lew’s fee with a little human barter. No go, Lew said he had hot flashes or something that day.      

It only gets weirder from there as Lew puts the clues in hand together which led to the place this bad ass Danny was employed, an apartment building run by some red-headed older woman who was looking for a little loose company when Lew crossed her path. No go, probably the residue from those hot flashes. I guess this bad ass kid was a social worker’s dream, you know the misunderstood youth noise because the next big lead was some high school do-gooder who saw this Danny as an alienated youth who had some good qualities not apparent to the general public who faced assaults, robberies, con games and mayhem from this stumblebum kid. The important thing is that this do-gooder had left his wife high and dry while he went around trying to save this motherfucker. Knocking on said do-gooder’s door a few times could have gotten Lew whatever he wanted from the lonely J.D-chasing widow. Lew touched, no brushed against her dress as she came forward which in the old days would have had him in the sack before lunch but now he was “all business” (no wonder this case was buried  deep in the Irvine files since even honest criminologists have an interest in keeping the legend of P.I. sexual prowess on the front burner).   

After this things start to get ridiculous because this bad ass Danny and that wayward daughter Ginny have decided for their own reasons to kidnap her dad’s boss, the ill-begotten son of some super-rich oilman who migrated in California after the Texas oil boom went bust. Get this double-header. It seems that this oilman, Steve, in his travels picked up a German wife, some frail from Dresden who hated being held in splendid Malibu isolation and was ready to break out, break out with Lew when he showed up to see what anybody knew about where the misunderstood kids would take Papa. All she got for her troubles was the now familiar Lew raincheck. But wait there is more, there is a doting Steve mom who will pay big bucks and throw in a little something extra for Lew’s troubles. She got the let’s get your apparently kidnaped son out of harm’s way first. What would become a frequent dodge.

It only gets worse from there, but I will shorten it up because you know what the results are already. Some ex-cop, a county guy was working his magic with modern technology to either blackmail or get some woman who turned out to be Danny’s mom. He got his head blown off for his own troubles but when Lew went to his house he ran into this ex-cop’s drunken wife who was not afraid to let her kimono slip for Lew’ eyes. He took an offered drink or five to while away the time with her in the kitchen. They blew out the door. I won’t even bore you with the few female cabbies and waitresses cluttered along the trail since a guy needs to get places and to eat since we now have a well-worn path.  Nothing doing.

Lew, who never even mentioned this case when I interviewed him in the early 1970s after he had been reduced to repo work and key-hole peeping through the generosity of Sheila Sharp’s detective agency, wound up letting the body count rise without getting to the bottom of the case. The bottom of the case, which cost him plenty of dough for not finding Steve alive, was that the whole play was an elaborate set-up so Steve’s mom, actually Jasper’s mom, her illegitimate son who had many years before killed Steve and had taken his place and his dough, could run through a Texas oil fortune. As for Danny he got blown away by that do-gooder high school guy when he showed his real colors. And that Ginny who was more than willing once she met Lew to play house with him got the big step-off and nothing else from him.          

       

     

The Case That Turned A Once Famous California P.I Lew Archer Into A Has-Been-The Road Down To Skid Road Aint That Far-The Jameson Affair

The Case That Turned A Once Famous California P.I Lew Archer Into A Has-Been-The Road Down To Skid Road Aint That Far-The Jameson Affair  

By Seth Garth

You never know what is going to tweak a reader’s interests, especially when it becomes the plural “readers” looking for the same answers. That was the case recently in response to my piece on the late once famous California private detective, snoop, gumshoe, sleuth, keyhole peeper or whatever you call them in your neighborhood Lew Archer (1915-2019) who came out of U.S. Army Military Intelligence after World War II ready to take on Sam, Miles, Phillip, Nick, the legendary Phil Larkin whoever on and become the king of the hill in the profession. Had the early credentials too. I outlined most of that in my very distinct “not an obituary” of the man whom I held in some esteem even as late as the early 1970s when I interviewed him in San Francisco where he was working for P.I. Hall of Famer Sheila Sharp (the first female to make it Dame May Whitty’s attempt was a joke or taken that way by the nominating committee).

You can see all of that in that recent piece but what readers have been wondering about is the case that broke Lew’s streak, brought him low as a big time P.I who would thereafter work his way down to repo work and keyhole peeping and then when he flunked that as the office go-fer (courtesy of Sheila in all cases who never really gave up on him, had a soft spot for when he was in his prime and ripping up crime and criminals until she in exasperation had to let him go when he was dipping into the coffee and crullers petty cash). That was the Jameson case (I have seen it spelled Jamison and Jameston but I will go woth the way it was printed in the Bay Tribune), although Jameson himself was a marginal figure, was one of those poor little rich boys who pined away for some young women when she ditched him for the next best thing and he never got over it) who had, get this, hired Lew out of the telephone directory where he was first on the Greater L.A. P.I. list. The gaff was that this overweight high-roller bum who stilled lived at home with his father sucking up honey buns was hung up on some girl he had known all his life, had planned to marry and she had turned him down cold, or got that way after some sidewalk Lothario lit up her sky. (That young woman, Leila and her own complicated relationship with this new blue Lothario had a few twists and turns which however even a graduate of one of those “become a P.I. in ten easy lessons (plus plenty of dough) used to be featured on matchbook covers could have figured out before lunch).        

   

The reason this Jameson kid, Peter I think, wanted Lew’s services was that he thought this Lothario, hell let’s call him that since he operated under about five different names anyway was a fake, a phony, damaged goods, a bum of the month selection maybe linked up to some bad asses, some hoods from Vegas when that town was still the Wild West unlike today when the glitter is off, way off and grandmothers with slot-machine worthy arms rule the roost. Was either a bagman or muscle or chief skimmer for Lenny Graham when he was king of the hill before the boys from the East headed out to take over. Maybe that is where Lew made his first line of mistakes, working the criminal gangster element grift that every P.I., even though matchbook graduate works from when serious money is involved, a few people are getting stacked up murdered and there is no trace, especially that last part. But P.I. 101 tells you watch out for some misdirection, something out of left field.  

That’s the front, okay the excuse, Lew put up when I interviewed him in the early 1970s as to why he fucked up what looked like a straight up bad guy gangsters case with a few bucks, throw away money by Vegas standards in play which sent him off the rails. The reality was somewhat different when I checked with Detective Sergeant Ames from the Sunnyvale Police Department who had to save Lew’s bacon from being fried, from him being the late Lew Archer back then and from his ex-wife Martha. Actually Martha is the key since shortly before Lew took the Jameson case Martha threw him out of the house, sent him packing leaving him to fend for himself where he was to sleep. She did care whether it was some sleepy motel or under a bridge but not in her house. Martha had gotten tired, very tired of being the social equivalent of a golf widow and even more tired of Lew’s grabbing every piece of ass he could find on a case (an a few times when just standing around). And kind of flaunted that sexual prowess around to the boys in the precinct and at the annual P.I. conventions. Always had some bimbo on his shoulder without fail.

I am not shrink, psychiatrist or anything like that but the way Martha laid out her story part of Lew’s trysts were to prove he could play with the big boys, the legends like Sam who famously had some twist named Mary in the hay and then calm as you please sent her over when the bodies piled up and it looked like he would take the heat for the bundle after she bang-banged them. Guys like Marlowe who took on two wealthy if screwy sisters at the same time, grabbed some silver wig gangster’s wife and a few stray waitresses and female bookstore clerks, hell even a librarian all while putting said gangster to bang-bang heaven. Guys like Lance Lane who never took a case unless it was some frail in distress and he got a little something besides wages and expenses for his troubles. Or the legendary Phil Larkin who to this day is still going after the young lovelies on the Internet, and they are responding. Yeah, so you could say it was the ethos of the then brotherhood to grabbed what could be grabbed in the sex department.           

That ethos appeared to be okay with Lew until he got the Martha toss and then he lost it. What in the old literature was called a “lost of nerve” but which really was sexual impotency, sexual dysfunction anyway. Today even tough, hard guys would on the sly get some help, grab some pills, see a doctor at least but then that was out and so Lew fell down on his own hubris. Just start with the young woman, that Leila, who this clown Jameson hired Lew to drag, kicking and screaming if necessary, away from that half-baked Lothario who had good looks, some patter and some ready cash as well. Had designs on the young woman’s family fortune, which turned out to be non-existent since her philandering and gambling father had dried up the well. She made it clear when Lew interviewed her that a little romp in the hay could be in the cards if Lew laid off her honey. Lew turned her down cold.       

From there strangely enough it was all downhill as Lew got twisted up in some silly story that the Lothario was “connected” with the mob in Vegas, might have been some mobster’s son or protégé. As mentioned before Lew, who previously had thought out all the angles before moving in, leaped all over that and maybe I would have too except our boy was a bright bulb who had gone to college, several and had some pretty bright professors ready to move mountains to get him ahead. That Vegas diversion let Lew fall down a couple more times, especially with the young house-bound wife of some French literature scholar who practically took her clothes off in front of him. Started rubbing him in the groin area, was ready to take him to heaven since her professor had gone stone cold. No sale.

Of course along with the sexual miscues the bodies kept piling up to Lew’s confusion, that young woman’s mother who he for the life of him could not figure in the gangster scenario, the Lothario whom he thought had been the subject of a gangland “hit”, a couple of Vegas types, some mysterious doctor connected to all parties and a guy who paved the way for others, all because Lew was so enthralled with the academics, was so taken in by the bullshit that the big time French scholar put out about not grabbing every young fresh student he could find in his classes. Yeah, like demented professors couldn’t commit a series of murders to keep their lady friends. The coppers, I hate to say, got there just in time before that deranged intellectual was ready to bang-bang Lew, saved his bacon. Now you have as much skinny as a I can tell you about the long sad downhill skid row tale of one Lew Archer. Damn.     

Once Famous California Private Detective Lew Archer Passes At 104 (1915-2019)-Found Dead In An L.A. Skid Rooming House Of An Overdose

Once Famous California Private Detective Lew Archer Passes At 104 (1915-2019)-Found Dead In An L.A. Skid Rooming House Of An Overdose

By Seth Garth

I don’t write obituaries. And if I did write obituaries it would not be about has-been private detectives who started out like a house on fire in the business and wound up head down in some common rooming house toilet after a heroin overdose at the age of 104. (Started out by the way via U.S. Army Military Intelligence during World War II and settled in nicely right after   the war cracking cases.) I have written about plenty of junkies, guys and some gals, who were the drug lords of their ages like the always stoned Neal Cassady, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in their prime, Sadie Hawkins the painter not the poet, Doctor Gonzo, Hunter Thompson who made a profession and a good living out of his experiences, Sid Levitt, Sally Devine the chanteuse, and a few other morphine addicts like Frankie Machine but they all had their resumes up to date, were doing their thing when they were “walking with the king.” Wrote, painted, sang some of their best stuff high as kites, maybe higher. Funky flunky Lew Archer fell down, went into the nether land after his fifteen minutes of fame. So, no, no obituaries for yet another American ninja private detective failure who couldn’t even make the P.I. Hall of Fame on a pass, on some bogus lifetime achievement basis (a campaign I regret to say I was part of in my wooly youth). Jesus, what a bum, him and that last so-called P.I. partner of his, a guy named Kenny Miller, no, Millar who introduced him to low-life crime and the junk.*

[* I was going to save the fire-branding of Millar if that was his name he used many from Stan Lappin to Ross McDowell, no, McDougal, I understand before they kicked him out of the club, tossed his ass in stir I think when he conned a bunch of guys, private detectives mind you, into giving him dough for  a surefire scheme he had to take Vegas dough, casino dough, like low-hanging fruit. All of it ending up his nose, a cousin cocaine addict before that was cool, and dragged dregs time Lew into his scheme as the punching bag fall guy since he had no other place to fall.

This Millar was working out of the Tappan Building in the Bunker Hill section of town, of L.A. skid row really. That building was filled with failed junkies like him, sleaze ball repo men with worn threadbare suits and rounded heels, a few working girls using the place for their assignations, winos pissing in the tacky carpeted halls, ambulance chasing lawyers whose last successful case was when FDR was president, failed dentists who had taken too much of their own medicine, doctors who had their licenses pulled for eighty-six degrees of malpractice, three card Monte artists on the lam, small bit life insurance guys selling low-priced premiums to poor folk with no return address, and the usual flotsam and jetsam of underground L.A., Hollywood.

The report was that Lew was so down on his uppers he grabbed Millar’s lapels to get “back in the game” after Sheila Sharp gave him the boot when he started taking a cut of the coffee and crullers money. This Millar bastard just wanted to use Lew as a front, a name from the past when he offered his services to old ladies looking for lost heirs and grabbing the dough, short money as it was since most of them who would deal with Ken had lost or used up all their serious money by living too long. Lew in his prime would have had this bum for lunch and had time to go bowling. The minute I saw the Millar name attached to Lew’s in the obit I cringed because even back in the East, even among the younger aficionados of the private detective racket his name was infamous for bullshit on a stick. Yeah, if as reported they put his ass in stir as much as I hate to say it about any man against the fucking coppers good riddance.]     

  

Frankly I was shocked when fellow writer and crime detection devotee Sarah Le Moyne told me she had read in one of the Los Angeles newspaper of Lew’s death when she was doing some research for a movie review she is planning to do on old-time Hollywood, the times when movie stars and all the way down the food chain were practically enslaved by the movie moguls like Harry Golden and Jimmy Wallace. (A measure of Lew’s fall can be gauged by his various receptions in the studios. When he was riding high he was as welcome as spring, had all kinds of starlets hanging off of all arms. Harry and Jimmy, other executives too were glad to send business his way since he was known to be stone-cold discreet while working a case. When he fell down, when he hit the skids, working some panhandle thing after kindly Sheila Sharp had to give him the boot orders were left to call the coppers if he even tried to hang around the front entrance of any studio.)     

I had thought that Lew had passed away long ago since I lost track of his whereabouts in the early 1980s. I guess this is the time in the interest of the current fade for transparency, or statements that make it seem that way, that those were the days when I had been involved with a committee of private detection devotees and private detectives to get Lew Archer into the P.I Hall of Fame the first time, the life time achievement time. I also admit that later egged on by Sarah that I acted to attempt to get him into the Hall  under a modern-day version of the idea that today we are more tolerant of asexuality as an attribute of a detective than the various nomination committees were back in the 1970s when every hardboiled detective, mostly male but increasing female too, had to bed anything in sight, client or stander-by. Lew fell down and the committees laughed in our faces since half of them were clueless about who Lew Archer even was, and why were they being bothered about some two-bit gofer who by then Sheila would not even let do repo work.                  

I will get to Lew’s early resume when it looked like he would join Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Phil Larkin, and Fester Dolan in the pantheon in a minute but that “two-bit gofer” is no exaggeration. I had been working in the early 1970s for the East Bay Other, now long gone with many other well-done journals and newspapers in the Bay area when the editor, might have been Sam Lowell, no, Ruth Ryan, knowing my schoolboy days interest in private detectives heard that a guy named Lew Archer was working for up and coming female private detective operator Sheila Sharp over on Post Street in Frisco town. (Sheila would make the Hall on her first try and I was there for her induction.) Ruth knew I had mentioned him one night when I was going on and on about great private detectives, real and literary, and those who could have been great but fell down like Lew who had solved the famous Galton and Harlan cases and a fistful of lesser ones before he hit the skids.      

Based on that information Ruth told me there might be a story there if Lew would consent to an interview. That was arranged through Sheila (whom Ruth had gone to school with) and we did the story which was nominated for a couple of prizes although no wins. In that interview I tried to get Lew to help me figure out why a guy whose name was still recognized in some high-end P.I circles for the Galton and Harlan cases was at that time serving them off the arm, serving the real detectives in the office their coffee and crullers (his hand in the till getting him canned from even that task). How he had at some point in the mid-1950s lost it, stopped trying to grab every female in the room as part of the overhead of his job just like Sam, Phil and the others. Started that long trip downhill so he messed up the Phillips case, got the girl he was supposed to save killed and her father committed suicide after in despair.

Worse mucked up the Jamison case so bad the public coppers had to bail him out (bad, very bad for the profession when “cold file it” after three days public coppers get involved in a serious case in any way). Reading about that case later gave me the chills. I didn’t claim to know his state of mind at the time, but something snapped. Lew went off on a tangent that cost half a dozen innocent people their lives just because he couldn’t let go of the fact that a few gangsters were in the background of the case (dumping money out of the casinos via a couple of “mules”) and only zeroed in on them. Couldn’t figure that some airhead professor who had a thing for young girls couldn’t pull a gun trigger. After the professor winged Lew the public coppers had to come in and pick up the pieces. Jesus, I would have blown town after that.      

How Sheila took pity on him for old time’s sake and let him do repo and keyhole peeping work when he was down and out I don’t know. Sheila was pound for pound one of the smartest operators around but her soft spot for Lew took some of the luster off a shining career. And when he bungled a big case on that latter skill, had some U.S. Senator in some hotel room with some woman not his wife on the hot seat but forgot to get the photographs brevetted him to the donut and sub sandwich detail.     

I supposed I could, if I still have them in the attic, look at my notes from that interview (those were the days when you took notes on yellow legal pads and wrote with pens) to piece together what he had said. (I tried to see if there was an archive for the East Bay Other on the Internet but no luck.) The gist of the downfall was two things-one a woman not his wife and the other Harry Daley, the famous psychologist. The woman not his wife part, when he had a wife, was Vera, the aide to that Mrs. Galton whose grandson he found after he had been kidnapped for serious ransom. He went on and on about her although when I checked later it was not clear if there was a Vera involved in the Galton case. What was true was that his very real wife divorced him, took all his money and whatever she could grab when she won that big adultery case against him leaving him busted.

This maybe Vera, some kind of gold-digger dumped him flat, left him high and dry. Literally dry. After Vera left he developed serious sexual impotency problems, couldn’t get it up. Lost his nerve with women after he couldn’t stand the gaff in the Sternwood case where the younger beautiful daughter Carmen put the whammy on him because he couldn’t “get it up.” Made him make a fatal mistake when the guy he was tailing, big-time gangster Eddie Mars, was not the guy who he killed in an ambush he had set up to impress Carmen. Jesus.       

Harry Daley entered the picture a few cases after this when his women clients were willing to throw something in beyond fifty dollars a day and expenses, he balked, and his business was beginning to die. Guys like Larry Larkin and Jack Vance were grabbing dough, expenses and whatever else was thrown at them. Harry had been recommended by Danny Harlan the guy he saved from a serial killer wife who wanted it all, all his dough that is, but not him. After a few sessions under Harry’s guidance Lew turned a new leaf, began to look at each case not as a puzzle to be solved by looking at hard facts, gluing them together and be done with it but looking at the motivation of the parties involved, the perp’s too. Jesus Lew as totally out of step with the rules of the road for hard-boiled detectives. Didn’t help his sexual impotency but didn’t solve any cases either. The notorious Norris serial killer case he had Jimmy Norris, a women hater, in his sights just after one murder, and let him go figuring maybe something his mother did long ago set him on the wrong road. The public coppers stopped Jimmy after three more murders.     

Like I said this is no obituary and I don’t write them but just thinking about the dismal spiral downhill to working with a sleaze like Kenny Millar who was disbarred from the profession after Sheila had to let him go and then dropping down further to the junk to ease whatever pain was causing his pain and a no name end in some Bunker Hill skid row rooming house filled with pissed halls and wasted needles is no way for a guy to end. I guess I can say this though-RIP, Lew Archer, RIP.