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Ross Macdonald

There was a quite good retrospective little essay by Tobias Jones on the North American crime writer, Ross Macdonald, in the Guardian recently. Macdonald has been one of my favourite novelists since playwright Morwyn Brebner turned me on to his work over twenty years ago. For those who love Chandler, Macdonald does deepen that oeuvre. I went to Foyles, the UK bookstore, the other day, to see how Macdonald was doing. There was only one of his books available, whereas the crime shelves featured more than a dozen books by most well-known crime authors. It seems his rep may have flagged, at least over here. Of his many classic books, The Blue Hammer, his last of the Lew Archers, moves me the most. I find the key trope almost unbearably moving.
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