The Ivory Grin
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The Ivory Grin is Ross Macdonald's fourth Lew Archer detective novel, published in April 1952. Like most of Macdonald's, the plot is complicated and takes place mostly in out of the way Californian locations.
Macdonald's working title for the novel was The Split Woman. The phrase The Ivory Grin that he eventually preferred appears near the start of the book. The author had still not decided on the final form of his assumed name by that date and used John Ross Macdonald on the cover. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in April 1952, and by Cassel & Co in London. Next year the paperback edition from Pocket Books was retitled Marked for Murder without Macdonald's permission. The cover featured a blonde loading an automatic, a female corpse and a blazing car.[1]
In Britain the book was favourably reviewed by Julian Symons, noting in the Times Literary Supplement that "The Ivory Grin uses many of the thriller’s standard ingredients, but it is not at all a standard product". In 1958 Symons also compiled for the Sunday Times a list of "The 99 Best Crime Stories" from 1794 to the present and included there The Ivory Grin.[2] In the decade between 1964 and 1975 eight translations of the book were to appear: in Catalan,[3] Danish,[4] French,[5] Czech,[6] in German from Switzerland,[7] Hungarian,[8] Finnish,[9] and in Spanish from Argentina.[10]
