“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.
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.