Ross MacDonald

I see that Penguin UK are soon to publish another in their series of books by Ross MacDonald. These are part of the Penguin Modern Classics series, and they deserve the title.

I think I read the whole of the RM oeuvre, about forty years ago, and they were all pretty good stuff. Rather dark, featuring families with strange and twisted histories, and rather Freudian. In terms of genre, they are crime fiction/private eye, and older readers may remember Paul Newman playing the famous Lew Archer in the movie version of The Drowning Pool.

RM has been described by Elmore Leonard as 'America's greatest crime writer', and while the point is arguable it's not far wrong.

His wife was Margaret Millar, absolutely no slouch at writing herself, though I haven't seen any mention of her for a long time.