Cannonball Read 13

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The Case of the Missing Miss

The Wycherly Woman by Ross Macdonald

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Having read them out of order, this wound up as my last unread Lew Archer novel. I’m going to miss cracking open one of his cases for the first time. Ross Macdonald’s divorced ex-cop private eye might not have much in the way of distinguishing characteristics, but he’s one heck of a character just the same. Tough with a flinty intelligence and a noggin seemingly made of steel, Archer specializes in unraveling long buried family secrets and exposing especially dastardly deeds. The case of Phoebe […]

The cab turned off U.S. 101 in the direction of the sea.

The Moving Target by Ross MacDonald

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I didn’t really know much about this book going in, but it was referenced in the PD James book “Talking about Detective Fiction” as a kind of inheritor of Raymond Chandler, and in this first book, that holds up for sure. We follow Lew Archer, a former cop turned private detective, as he’s hired to assist on a missing person, a business tycoon in Los Angeles, who has gone missing. His family–a second wife and adult daughter–are worried something has happened to him. A recent […]

Down Mexico Way

The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald

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I’m nearing the end of my years-long dive into the Lew Archer series, and I’ve begun spacing them out to avoid finishing. The Zebra-Striped Hearse is definitely a lesser entry in the series, but there’s still much to be enjoyed. Archer himself is always enjoyable. As tough as they come and smarter than others give him credit for, Macdonald’s private eye extraordinaire finds himself on the trail of a young woman on the verge of coming into a fortune but who may be about to […]

Crime, Boy I Don’t Know

The Galton Case by Ross Macdonald

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CBR11Bingo: I Love This (Not this book specifically, but post-war California noir in general.) For a while I thought The Galton Case might be the realization of my Ideal Novel. I suppose it terribly “male” of me, but there’s nothing I like reading about more than a tough-guy private detective dealing with a rich family full of dark secrets, driving around California and occasionally getting knocked out by street-wise gangsters. Raymond Chandler is the most well-known practitioner of the form, but for my money Ross […]

California Love

The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald

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I’ve developed a recent habit of revisiting old books; some favorites, others not. I wanted to see how they held up after all this time and if my notions of them were still true. Many list The Drowning Pool as one of Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar)’s greatest works. I am a Lew Archer diehard. I’ve said many times in this space that it’s my favorite detective mystery series of all-time. But I’m also lucky that I unintentionally began it later in the series, when Macdonald had already […]



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