If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantel of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime
novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks
the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.
A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he’s being fed a line,
but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts the case. He tracks the wayward maid to a ramshackle motel in a seedy, run-down small town but finds her dead in her tiny room, with her throat
slit from ear to ear. Archer digs deeper into the case and discovers a web of deceit and intrigue, with crazed numbers runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls, and a golden-boy
shipping heir who’s gone mysteriously missing.
Editorial Reviews
Editorial Reviews
“Macdonald’s spare, controlled narration, built for action and speed, conveys the world through which the action moves and gives it meaning, [bringing] scene and character, however swiftly, before the eye without a blur.” —New York Times Book Review
“Archer-Macdonald are working together at their peak, piecing together a most modern American tragedy, making literature out of the thriller form, gazing more clearly [than] ever into the future as it rolls through the smog.” —Newsweek
“Archer solves crimes with the instincts of a psychologist and the conscience of a priest, and the mid-twentieth-century Southern California setting is a wonderful ride in the Wayback Machine.” —Los Angeles Times, praise for the series
Ross Macdonald (1915–1983) was the pen name of Kenneth Millar. For over twenty years he lived in Santa Barbara and wrote mystery novels about the fascinating and changing society of his
native state. He is widely credited with elevating the detective novel to the level of literature with his compactly written tales of murder and despair. His works have received awards from the
Mystery Writers of America and of Great Britain, and his book The Moving Target was made into the movie Harper in 1966. In 1982 he was awarded the Eye Award for Lifetime Achievement
from the Private Eye Writers of America.
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