Download or read book Ross MacDonald written by Tom Nolan and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2008-05-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he died in 1983, Ross Macdonald was the best-known and most highly regarded crime-fiction writer in America. Long considered the rightful successor to the mantles of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and his Lew Archer-novels were hailed by The New York Times as "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American." Now, in the first full-length biography of this extraordinary and influential writer, a much fuller picture emerges of a man to whom hiding things came as second nature. While it was no secret that Ross Macdonald was the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar -- a Santa Barbara man married to another good mystery writer, Margaret Millar -- his official biography was spare. Drawing on unrestricted access to the Kenneth and Margaret Millar Archives, on more than forty years of correspondence, and on hundreds of interviews with those who knew Millar well, author Tom Nolan has done a masterful job of filling in the blanks between the psychologically complex novels and the author's life -- both secret and overt. Ross Macdonald came to crime-writing honestly. Born in northern California to Canadian parents, Kenneth Millar grew up in Ontario virtually fatherless, poor, and with a mother whose mental stability was very much in question. From the age of twelve, young Millar was fighting, stealing, and breaking social and moral laws; by his own admission, he barely escaped being a criminal. Years later, Millar would come to see himself in his tales' wrongdoers. "I don't have to be violent," he said, "My books are." How this troubled young man came to be one of the most brilliant graduate students in the history of the University of Michigan and how this writer, who excelled in a genre all too often looked down upon by literary critics, came to have a lifelong friendship with Eudora Welty are all examined in the pages of Tom Nolan's meticulous biography. We come to a sympathetic understanding of the Millars' long, and sometimes rancorous, marriage and of their life in Santa Barbara, California, with their only daughter, Linda, whose legal and emotional traumas lie at the very heart of the story. But we also follow the trajectory of a literary career that began in the pages of Manhunt and ended with the great respect of such fellow writers as Marshall McLuhan, Hugh Kenner, Nelson Algren, and Reynolds Price, and the longtime distinguished publisher Alfred A. Knopf. As Ross Macdonald: A Biography makes abundantly clear, Ross Macdonald's greatest character -- above and beyond his famous Lew Archer -- was none other than his creator, Kenneth Millar.
Download or read book The Galton Case written by Ross Macdonald and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lew Archer returns in this gripping mystery, widely recognized as one of acclaimed mystery writer Ross Macdonald's very best, about the search for the long lost heir of the wealthy Galton family. Almost twenty years have passed since Anthony Galton disappeared, along with a suspiciously streetwise bride and several thousand dollars of his family's fortune. Now Anthony's mother wants him back and has hired Lew Archer to find him. What turns up is a headless skeleton, a boy who claims to be Galton's son, and a con game whose stakes are so high that someone is still willing to kill for them. Devious and poetic, The Galton Case displays MacDonald at the pinnacle of his form.
Download or read book It s All One Case written by Paul Nelson and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a prose series of unpublished interviews with, and a visual retrospective of, the seminal mid- to late-20th century literary crime writer. In 1976, critic Paul Nelson spent several weeks interviewing legendary detective writer Ross Macdonald, who elevated the form to a new literary level. “We talked about everything imaginable,” Nelson wrote―including Macdonald’s often meager beginnings; his dual citizenship; writers, painters, music, and movies he admired; The Great Gatsby, his favorite book; how he used symbolism to change detective writing; and more. This book, published in a handsome, oversized format, collects these unpublished interviews and is a visual history of Macdonald’s professional career. It is illustrated with rare and select items from one of the world’s largest private archives of Macdonald ephemera; reproduces, in full color, the covers of the various editions of Macdonald’s more than two dozen books; collects facsimile reproductions of select pages from his manuscripts, as well as magazine spreads; and presents rare photos, many never before seen.
Download or read book Strangers in Town written by Ross Macdonald and published by Norfolk, Va. : Crippen & Landru. This book was released on 2001 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In an important literary discovery, Macdonald biographer, Tom Nolan, unearthed three previously unpublished private-eye stories by Ross Macdonald. 'Death by Water, ' written in 1945, features Macdonald's first detective Joe Rogers, and two novelettes from 1950 and 1955, 'Strangers in Town' and 'The Angry Man, ' are detailed cases of Lew Archer."--
Download or read book The Chill written by Ross Macdonald and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2010-12-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Chill a distraught young man hires private investigator Lew Archer to track down his runaway bride. But no sooner has he found Dolly Kincaid than Archer finds himself entangled in two murders, one twenty years old, the other so recent that the blood is still wet. What ensues is a detective novel of nerve-racking suspense, desperately believable characters, and one of the most intricate plots ever spun by an American crime writer.
Download or read book The Moving Target written by Ross Macdonald and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2010-12-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in Ross Macdonald's acclaimed Lew Archer series introduces the detective who redefined the role of the American private eye and gave the crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity only hinted at before. Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There's the sun-worshipping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain; the fading actress with sidelines in astrology and S&M. Now one of Sampson's friends may have arranged his kidnapping. As Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the megarich to jazz joints where you get beaten up between sets, The Moving Target blends sex, greed, and family hatred into an explosively readable crime novel.
Download or read book The Blue Hammer written by Ross Macdonald and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2010-11-17 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness and only Detective Lew Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art. Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Archer, but that was before the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer find himself smack in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared. He left behind a bevy of muses, molls, dolls, and dames-each one scrambling for what they thought was rightfully theirs.
Download or read book The Underground Man written by Ross Macdonald and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this noir mystery, PI Lew Archer is hired to track down a missing child, but becomes embroiled in a baffling forest fire that threatens an affluent Southern California community.
Download or read book The Ivory Grin written by Ross Macdonald and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2010-12-29 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traveling from sleazy motels to stately seaside manors, The Ivory Grin is one of Lew Archer's most violent and macabre cases ever. 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 number-runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls, and a golden-boy shipping heir who’s gone mysteriously missing.
Download or read book The Ferguson Affair written by Ross Macdonald and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2010-12-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was a long way from the million-dollar Foothill Club to Pelly Street, where grudges were settled in blood and Spanish and a stolen diamond ring landed a girl in jail. Defense lawyer Bill Gunnarson was making the trip—fast. He already knew a kidnapping at the club was tied to the girl's hot rock, and he suspected that a missing Hollywood starlet was the key to a busy crime ring. But while Gunnarson made his way through a storm of deception, money, drugs, and passions, he couldn't guess how some big shots and small-timers would all end up with murder in common...
Download or read book The Drowning Pool written by Ross Macdonald and published by Dissertations-G. This book was released on 1976 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of print since 1988, here is a classic Lew Archer thriller by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Ross Macdonald. When an iron-willed matriarch with an oil field in her backyard is found floating in the pool, Lew Archer ventures into the bizarre world of her family. Previous publisher: Bantam. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book The Instant Enemy written by Ross Macdonald and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2008-04-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generations of murder, greed and deception come home to roost in time for the most shocking conclusion ever in a Lew Archer novel. At first glance, it's an open-and-shut missing persons case: a headstrong daughter has run off to be with her hothead juvenile delinquent boyfriend. That is until this bush-league Bonnie & Clyde kidnap Stephen Hackett, a local millionaire industrialist. Now, Archer is offered a cool 100 Gs for his safe return by his coquettish heiress mother who has her own mysterious ties to this disturbed duo. But the deeper Archer digs, the more he realizes that nothing is as it seems and everything is questionable. Is the boyfriend a psycho ex-con with murder on the brain or a damaged youngster trying to straighten out his twisted family tree? And is the daughter simply his nympho sex-kitten companion in crime or really a fragile kid, trying to block out horrific memories of bad acid and an unspeakable sex crime?
Download or read book The Three Roads written by Ross Macdonald and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silken skin pale against dark hair, red lips provocatively smiling at him—that’s how Lieutenant Bret Taylor remembered Lorraine. He was drunk when he married her, stone cold sober when he found her dead. Out on the sunlit streets of L.A. walked the man—her lover, her killer—who had been with her that fatal night. Taylor intended to find him. And when he did, the gun in his pocket would provide the quickest kind of justice. But first Taylor had to find something else: an elusive memory so powerful it drove him down three terrifying roads toward self-destruction—grief, ecstasty, and death.
Download or read book Meanwhile There Are Letters written by Suzanne Marrs and published by Arcade. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2016 Edgar Award finalist, the “intimate, luminous portrait of a friendship” of two American literary icons (Kirkus, starred review). In 1970, Ross Macdonald wrote a letter to Eudora Welty, beginning a thirteen-year correspondence between fellow writers and kindred spirits. Though separated by background, geography, genre, and his marriage, the two authors shared their lives in witty, wry, tender, and at times profoundly romantic letters, each drawing on the other for inspiration, comfort, and strength. They brought their literary talents to bear on a wide range of topics, discussing each others' publications, the process of translating life into fiction, the nature of the writer’s block each encountered, books they were reading, and friends and colleagues they cherished. They also discussed the world around them, the Vietnam War, the Nixon, Carter, and Reagan presidencies, and the environmental threats facing the nation. The letters reveal the impact each had on the other’s work, and they show the personal support Welty provided when Alzheimer’s destroyed Macdonald’s ability to communicate and write. The editors of this collection, who are the definitive biographers of these two literary figures, have provided extensive commentary and an introduction. They also include Welty’s story fragment “Henry,” which addresses Macdonald’s disease. With its mixture of correspondence and narrative, Meanwhile There Are Letters provides a singular reading experience: a prose portrait of two remarkable artists and one unforgettable relationship.
Download or read book Blue City written by Ross Macdonald and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was a son who hadn’t known his father very well. It was a town shaken by a grisly murder—his father’s murder. Johnny Weatherly was home from a war and wandering. When he found out that his father had been assassinated on a street corner and that his father’s seductive young wife had inherited a fortune, he started knocking on doors. The doors came open, and Johnny stepped into a world of gamblers, whores, drug-dealers, and blackmailers, a place in which his father had once moved freely. Now Johnny Weatherly was going to solve this murder—by pitting his rage, his courage, and his lost illusions against the brutal underworld that has overtaken his hometown.
Download or read book Self portrait Ceaselessly Into the Past written by Ross Macdonald and published by Borgo Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ross MacDonald written by Tom Nolan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he died in 1983, Ross Macdonald was the best-known and most highly regarded crime-fiction writer in America. Long considered the rightful successor to the mantles of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and his Lew Archer-novels were hailed by The New York Times as "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American." Now, in the first full-length biography of this extraordinary and influential writer, a much fuller picture emerges of a man to whom hiding things came as second nature. While it was no secret that Ross Macdonald was the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar -- a Santa Barbara man married to another good mystery writer, Margaret Millar -- his official biography was spare. Drawing on unrestricted access to the Kenneth and Margaret Millar Archives, on more than forty years of correspondence, and on hundreds of interviews with those who knew Millar well, author Tom Nolan has done a masterful job of filling in the blanks between the psychologically complex novels and the author's life -- both secret and overt. Ross Macdonald came to crime-writing honestly. Born in northern California to Canadian parents, Kenneth Millar grew up in Ontario virtually fatherless, poor, and with a mother whose mental stability was very much in question. From the age of twelve, young Millar was fighting, stealing, and breaking social and moral laws; by his own admission, he barely escaped being a criminal. Years later, Millar would come to see himself in his tales' wrongdoers. "I don't have to be violent," he said, "My books are." How this troubled young man came to be one of the most brilliant graduate students in the history of the University of Michigan and how this writer, who excelled in a genre all too often looked down upon by literary critics, came to have a lifelong friendship with Eudora Welty are all examined in the pages of Tom Nolan's meticulous biography. We come to a sympathetic understanding of the Millars' long, and sometimes rancorous, marriage and of their life in Santa Barbara, California, with their only daughter, Linda, whose legal and emotional traumas lie at the very heart of the story. But we also follow the trajectory of a literary career that began in the pages of Manhunt and ended with the great respect of such fellow writers as Marshall McLuhan, Hugh Kenner, Nelson Algren, and Reynolds Price, and the longtime distinguished publisher Alfred A. Knopf. As Ross Macdonald: A Biography makes abundantly clear, Ross Macdonald's greatest character -- above and beyond his famous Lew Archer -- was none other than his creator, Kenneth Millar.
