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Ross MacDonald, renowned crime novelist and creator of private detective Lew Archer, is frequently associated with predecessors Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as a master of the "hard-boiled" detective fiction genre. However, MacDonald introduced a distinctive psychological depth and thematic cohesion to his work.
Born Kenneth Millar in Los Gatos, California, MacDonald's Canadian parents moved the family back to Canada when he was three. Shortly thereafter, his father abandoned them. Throughout his youth, Millar was passed among relatives; at one point, his mother nearly placed him in an orphanage but changed her mind at the last moment. Themes of poverty, rootlessness, and the quest for family would later permeate his writing. He attended schools in Ontario, graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1938, and pursued graduate studies at the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan.
Initially writing light short pieces for school newspapers, Millar shifted to more serious writing during his time in the US Naval Reserve in World War II. His early books were published under his own name, but in 1949 he released "The Moving Target" under the pseudonym John MacDonald to avoid confusion with his wife, crime fiction writer Margaret Millar. However, since John D. MacDonald, creator of the Travis McGee series, objected to the name, Millar adopted the pen name Ross MacDonald.
"The Moving Target" introduced Lew Archer, a name inspired by "Ben-Hur" author Lew Wallace and Sam Spade's partner Miles Archer from Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon." The novel saw moderate success and was followed by "The Drowning Pool" in 1950 (later adapted into the 1975 film). Over his career, MacDonald wrote 19 more Lew Archer novels, including notable titles such as "The Barbarous Coast" (1956), "The Galton Case" (1959), "The Wycherly Woman" (1961), "The Goodbye Look" (1969), "The Underground Man" (1971), "Sleeping Beauty" (1973), and his final work, "The Blue Hammer" (1976).
MacDonald's critical acclaim grew during the 1960s and 1970s; he was featured on the cover of Newsweek in 1971, and Nobel laureate William Golding praised his series as "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American author." His readership expanded with film adaptations of "The Moving Target" (retitled "Harper," 1966, starring Paul Newman) and "The Drowning Pool" (1975, also with Newman). An earlier Millar novel, "Blue City" (1947), was adapted into a less successful 1986 film.
Ross MacDonald died at his Santa Barbara, California home after a three-year struggle with Alzheimer's Disease.
