Ross Macdonald (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

Ross Macdonald (pseudonym of Kenneth Millar) wrote some two dozen detective novels, among them the popular series featuring Southern California private detective Lew Archer. In THE MOVING TARGET (1949), THE DROWNING POOL (1950), and THE UNDERGROUND MAN (1971) Macdonald raised American detective fiction to a more sophisticated level, capturing an audience of more cultured and mature readers and broadening the expressive possibilities of the genre. Like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, this accomplished American writer has garnered critical acclaim: he was honored in Great Britain with the Golden Dagger Award in 1965 and in America with the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and the Popular Culture Award of Excellence in 1974. Bernard A. Schopen focuses on the manner as well as the matter in Macdonald's narrative art, analyzing the development of central themes like abandonment, victimization, and the sources of human evil. His study provides an overview of the American detective novel, placing the genre within the broader tradition of the American novel and assessing the artistic contribution of Macdonald's works. Schopen demonstrates how Macdonald transformed American detective fiction into a form that could give readers both the pleasure of a detective story and the psychological and artistic complexity of a novel.