Like the other Lew Archer books, Sleeping Beauty deals with such matters as the intrusion of the past into the present, family guilt and decline, money and sex, the class struggle, and violent death. But it also focuses on an environmental issue as a metaphor for the despoliation which is going on in the human community. The plot is constructed around an oil spill off the California coast. The poetic image Macdonald uses is one of seeing the oil pumping station as a giant knife plunged into the earth with the black blood flowing out around the puncture wound. The natural environment, like the human one, has been attacked and violated, leaving a gaping hole.

Macdonald's use of the natural disaster caused by human error, which in turn was motivated by greed and power, provides a perfect image of a world gone wrong. It also supplies...