Synopsis
Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) was the author of eighteen books that a New York Times critic called the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American : the Lew Archer canon, which included such breakthrough best-sellers as "The Underground Man," "The Goodbye Look," and "The Blue Hammer. " Macdonald (born Kenneth Millar) also wrote several novelettes and short-stories involving Southern California private-detective Lew Archer. "The Archer Files" for the first time collects all the brief Archer fiction: the stories from Macdonald s 1955 paperback-original "The Name Is Archer," the additional tales included in the Otto Penzler-edited 1977 volume "Lew Archer: Private Investigator," and the three then-unknown novellas presented in Crippen & Landru s 2001 book "Strangers in Town." Also included in "The Archer Files" are several lengthy, never-before-published fragments of unfinished Macdonald stories: case notes, as it were, from the files of Lew Archer. Edited by Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan, "The Archer Files" is prefaced with Nolan s biographical sketch of Lew Archer himself -- the character Eudora Welty described as "a champion" and "a distinguished creation ... As a detective and as a man he takes the human situation with full seriousness. " Jeff Wong s cover is adapted from the 1955 paperback original, but depicting Ross Macdonald rather than Lew Archer.
Reviews
Archer fans are in for a treat here, from the cover, based on a 1955 paperback original (substituting Macdonald's mug for Archer's), to the nifty biographical sketch of Archer by editor Nolan, all the way through a rat-a-tat collection of postwar-L.A. noir tales centered squarely on the no-nonsense private eye with an office down the street from Ciro's on the Sunset Strip. The characterizations of Archer are understandably lean in fact, the first two stories were originally about newspaperman Sam Drake but readers will gain a surprisingly full sense of the man from the collection. Archer is a tough, sardonic, well-read, hard-luck humanist who sets lyrical scenes as well as he makes deadeye shots. The murders he investigates are primarily passional, but there's usually a money motive as well. True, a few of the plots don't withstand scrutiny. But it's hard to resist lines such as He was indicted for homicide once, even in Chicago and I heard him retching. He had meant it literally when he said I made him sick. That's prose as sharp and durable as the detective's trademark charcoal-gray suits. Sennett, Frank
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