Down These Mean Streets

Sam Spade would have rolled over in bed and ignored the knock; Philip Marlowe would have been out walking the LA streets in the rain; later on, Mickey Spillane would have just shot that annoying predawn visitor. But Lew Archer is as much a social worker, a counselor, a father confessor as he is a private eye. Macdonald gave us a detective with psychological depth; a gumshoe capable of throwing around words like "gestalt."

Read the rest of Maureen Corrigan's essay on Ross Macdonald.