“The Dalton Case” is where he first really gets the Freudian dysfunctional family psychodrama dynamics worked into his crime fiction. I once spent a college weekend in Chicago searching every used bookstore in the area and found all of his then out-of-print Bantam paperbacks and then reading them all.
When I read Ross MacDonald's The Chill a number of years ago, I was struck how the author effectively examined the tale's moral ambiguity and Archer's empathy for the victims of crime. I cannot say how his body of work compares to that of Hammett or Chandler, but I can say that MacDonald had a formidable talent in expanding the genre of detective fiction.
Just read “The Underground Man” because attention to it has recently been rekindled by retrospective essays about the Altadena and Palisades fires last year. Thanks for your essay and also for the extremely helpful chart mapping relationships among the cast of characters.
Thank you for writing this and sharing it. I would love to read more of your take on west coast crime/noir fiction.
“The Dalton Case” is where he first really gets the Freudian dysfunctional family psychodrama dynamics worked into his crime fiction. I once spent a college weekend in Chicago searching every used bookstore in the area and found all of his then out-of-print Bantam paperbacks and then reading them all.
Big Ross McD fan. Enjoyed thoroughly. Thanks for sharing.
When I read Ross MacDonald's The Chill a number of years ago, I was struck how the author effectively examined the tale's moral ambiguity and Archer's empathy for the victims of crime. I cannot say how his body of work compares to that of Hammett or Chandler, but I can say that MacDonald had a formidable talent in expanding the genre of detective fiction.
Thanks so much for your insightful review of The Underground Man
Just read “The Underground Man” because attention to it has recently been rekindled by retrospective essays about the Altadena and Palisades fires last year. Thanks for your essay and also for the extremely helpful chart mapping relationships among the cast of characters.