 Ross
Macdonald, the Holy Ghost, of the trinity who created the archetype hardboiled American
PI. He stands along with Dashiell Hammett, the Father,
and Raymond
Chandler, the Son. He's the only one of the three that used a pen name
to "protect" his output as a real writer [meaning a teller of tales as dry as a
popcorn fart]. Born Kenneth Millar in Los Gatos, CA, he was raised from a very young age in Canada by his mother, Annie Millar after both were abandoned by father and husband, John Macdonald Millar - you can see where his first nom de plume originated. After a poor childhood, he attended the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan, where he also taught. He served in active duty in the US Naval Reserve in 1944-46 in the Pacific theatre. He earned a Ph.D. in 1951. Pretty high-toned for a guy who wrote about PIs. He married Margaret Sturm in 1938 and she became a mystery writer of some note as Margaret Millar. I believe she married him just to be able to shed "Sturm." Whereas Hammett left school at 13, and his writing, while vigorous and formative of a genre, had a limited depth. Chandler, who had a classical education in the English public school system, brought sophistication to characters as well as a literate caste to his work. Macdonald, the most highly-educated of the three, rounded out the genre by bringing in classical elements to the milieu as well as emotional depth to the characters. The Moving Target, published in 1949 was the first Lew Archer novel. Macdonald picked up the Archer name from Sam Spade's partner Miles Archer in Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Macdonald published his first novels under the pseudonym of John Macdonald, but to avoid confusion with fellow mystery writer John D. MacDonald he changed it to John Ross Macdonald and finally to Ross Macdonald. Seems that Macdonald didn't get along with his fellow PI writers. Chandler dismissed his with acidic words, but by then Chandler was on his way to becoming a rolling ball of vitriolic cynicism. Macdonald had equally bad things to say about Mickey Spillane's works. That strikes me as Alexander Solzhenitsyn taking potshots at Stan Lee. Macdonald's novels feature Freudian themes and his typical approach to a novel is to begin with a contemporary situation that reveals past crimes of Biblical or Greek tragedy themes. Archer is an agent of digging out the underlying causes of the things he is investigating, often acting as the catalyst for characters to explore their psyches. You can see his influences in the works of Robert B. Parker, in both the way the prima facea investigation often reveals a deeper or past crime, and the way Spenser often acts as a psychological enabler to bring catharsis to characters. Macdonald underwent psychotherapy and one biographer suspects he might have undergone homosexual abuse as a child. Perhaps this therapy helped him avoid the Hollywood-Crash-and-Burn of Hammett and Chandler, though the curse seems to have been deflected to his daughter who became an alcoholic and died by her own hand. Macdonald eventually became a best-selling author and was featured on the cover of "Newsweek." He wrote an autobiography, Self-Portrait, 1981, as well as contributing to such diverse magazines as "Sports Illustrated." He died in 1983 of complications due to Alzheimer's in Santa Barbara, CA. |
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| The Lew Archer Series | |
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The Moving Target © 1949 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Drowning Pool © 1950 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Way Some People Die © 1951 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Ivory Grin © 1952 Synopsis
Analysis
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Meet Me At The Morgue © 1953 Synopsis
Analysis
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Find A Victim © 1954 Synopsis
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The Barbarous Coast © 1956 Synopsis
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The Doomsters © 1958 Synopsis
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The Galton Case © 1959 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Ferguson Affair © 1960 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Wycherly Woman © 1961 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Zebra-Striped Hearse © 1962 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Chill © 1964 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Far Side Of The Dollar © 1965 Synopsis
Analysis
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Black Money © 1966 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Instant Enemy © 1968 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Goodbye Look © 1969 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Underground Man © 1971 Synopsis
Analysis
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Sleeping Beauty © 1973 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Blue Hammer © 1976 Synopsis
Analysis
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Lew Archer, Private Investigator re-released as The Name is Archer without the last two stories © 1977 Find the Woman Gone Girl The Bearded Lady The Suicide Guilt-Edged Blonde The Sinister Habit Wild Goose Chase Midnight Blue Sleeping Dog |
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Strangers in Town © 2001 Death by Water Strangers in Town The Angry Man |
| The Chet Gordon Novels | |
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The Dark Tunnel © 1944 Synopsis
Analysis
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Trouble Follows Me ©1946 |
| Other Works | |
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Blue City © 1947 Synopsis
Analysis
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The Three Roads © 1948 Synopsis
Analysis
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