The Archer Files

The accomplishment of Ross Macdonald in achieving true art within the confines of a presumptively trivial genre, the detective story, cannot be over-appreciated. The richness of Macdonald’s prose and his melancholy eye for character transcend any cops-and-robbers mundanity. For one like me, who has read all of Macdonald’s novels, this collection of all of his short stories (and a few fragments) about detective Lew Archer is like lapping up the last precious drops from a near-empty canteen while stranded in the desert. It’s both utterly delicious and sad. Macdonald’s skill with the short story is on par with his novelistic talents despite the different requirements of each form. Each of the stories is satisfying and rich. The show more fragments of unfinished novels or stories are infinitely tantalizing, yet in most cases they are so intriguing and enjoyable in their mere expression that they are more satisfying in their own right, even without conclusions. Anyone who appreciates a good tale wonderfully written will find much to love in this wonderful book. show less

I've said many times that Ross Macdonald's stories are every bit as satisfying as his novels, so if you're a fan of The Galton Case or The Chill but you've never read the shorter works, then by all means pick this up. The standouts are "Midnight Blue" and "Gone Girl"; in the former, private eye Lew Archer investigates the murder of a high school girl, while the latter manages to squeeze an entire novel's worth of action into just under thirty pages. Looking for nothing more than a little rest at a roadside motel north of San Diego, Archer finds himself embroiled in a shooting investigation, taking a very dangerous detour to Palm Springs and putting all the pieces together just in time for the story's tense climax at a broken-down beach show more house. It's a minor masterpiece whose bitter, tragic taste will linger for days after you've read it.

On the cover, Otto Penzler calls Macdonald's work "serious American literature," and he's right. These stories confirm it. show less

This is a LOT of short stories—every single one featuring Lew Archer—and there are fun extras like a biographical sketch of Archer pulled together from the various books and some fragments of scenes that didn’t (necessarily) end up as complete books. Recommended for the Archer completist.