I’ve apparently decided to read all of Ross Macdonald’s works this year (stay tuned) which means diving into his non-Archer novels. The Ferguson Affair hardly misses the pugnacious Lew Archer, with attorney Bill Gunnarson making for a suitable investigator. If Gunnarson seems to go an awfully long way for his client it’s an acceptable stretching of artistic license. Gunnarson is a private attorney asked to represent a young nurse caught trying to sell stolen jewelry. When he tries to verify her story about being given […]

In this intricately mapped detective novel, Macdonald’s ex-cop P.I. Lew Archer finds himself investigating three murders, committed at ten-year intervals and in multiple states. The interconnected nature of the killings and of the cast of characters speak to an expert at plotting out a story, while the nearly endless series of reversals and revelations speak to the imagination and wit of Macdonald, an author who deserves the same status as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Accosted right outside a courtroom where his testimony has just helped […]

When an escapee from the state mental hospital knocks on his door late at night, divorced ex-cop Lew Archer finds himself suddenly entangled in a long-running family drama. Carl Hallman is the scion of a powerful state senator, locked up because he blamed himself for the deaths of his mother and father. When Archer convinces Hallman to turn himself in, the detective’s sense of curiosity gets the better of him, and when he asks one question he finds himself knocked out on the floor and […]