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Lew Archer
The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes
Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) was the author of eighteen books that a New York Times critic called the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American : the Lew Archer canon, which included such breakthrough best-sellers as "The Underground Man," "The Goodbye Look," and "The Blue Hammer. " Macdonald (born Kenneth Millar) also wrote several novelettes and short-stories involving Southern California private-detective Lew Archer. "The Archer Files" for the first time collects all the brief Archer the stories from Macdonald s 1955 paperback-original "The Name Is Archer," the additional tales included in the Otto Penzler-edited 1977 volume "Lew Private Investigator," and the three then-unknown novellas presented in Crippen & Landru s 2001 book "Strangers in Town." Also included in "The Archer Files" are several lengthy, never-before-published fragments of unfinished Macdonald case notes, as it were, from the files of Lew Archer. Edited by Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan, "The Archer Files" is prefaced with Nolan s biographical sketch of Lew Archer himself -- the character Eudora Welty described as "a champion" and "a distinguished creation ... As a detective and as a man he takes the human situation with full seriousness. " Jeff Wong s cover is adapted from the 1955 paperback original, but depicting Ross Macdonald rather than Lew Archer.
349 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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317 people want to read
About the author
Ross Macdonald
158 books809 followersRoss Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
December 17, 2019
This book is essential to anyone who has a serious interest in the evolution of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, his origins and development. It contains the complete text of the first Archer anthology of stories, "The Name is Archer" (1955), two "lost" early works, "Death by Water" and "Strangers in Town," and three later short stories first printed in "Lew Archer:Private Investigator"(1977). In addition, it offers sixty pages of "Case Notes": fourteen separate expositions for uncompleted Archer novels or stories, some merely abandoned and others later re-used and transformed.
Of the new completed stories, I found "Strangers in Town" the most interesting. Some of "Strangers" Macdonald re-used in one of the best short works of his early period, "Guilt Edged Blonde," and the rest he transformed into "The Ivory Grin," one of his more successful early novels. The changes are all for the better; as always, it is gratifying to observe a master craftsman at work. The fourteen fragments vary in quality, but each is so characteristically Archer that I found myself thoroughly enjoying each of them, even though I knew none of them would ever be brought to a satisfying Ross Macdonald conclusion.
Then again, I'm a die-hard Macdonald fan. For anybody else, "My Name of Archer" is a sufficient sample of his shorter fiction.
June 8, 2023
06/2017
Four stars is how much I enjoyed this, though in the end, most of the stories were just okay. There were, however, a few that felt very full with satisfying mysteries: The Bearded Lady (from 1948), The Angry Man (1955) and Midnight Blue (from 1960).
Four stars is how much I enjoyed this, though in the end, most of the stories were just okay. There were, however, a few that felt very full with satisfying mysteries: The Bearded Lady (from 1948), The Angry Man (1955) and Midnight Blue (from 1960).
November 22, 2015
3.5
Ya lo dije antes, Macdonald era un puto genio. Esta colección de relatos de su detective, Lew Archer, me cautivó con cada una de sus incógnitas y misterios. Es increíble su capacidad para desentrañar y descubrir cómo se cometió el crimen, el móvil y, por supuesto, el asesino. Algunos casos pueden resultar bastante similares, es decir, como si siguiera un patrón, pero aun así te logra sorprender con finales impredecibles. Cada cuento es un desafío para Archer y a medida que te sumergís más profundo en sus investigaciones te vas perdiendo hasta decir: "No tengo la menor idea de lo que pueda pasar de ahora en adelante". Sin embargo, en algunos casos no sucede eso; creés que ya está todo resuelto, que es todo fácil, pero luego Macdonald te da una fuerte cachetada en las últimas páginas y es inevitable sentirse tonto. Hay otros en los que parece todo resuelto, y las restantes cincuenta palabras te cambian todo con un giro de 180° que te deja alelado.
Ya terminando, es una muy buena colección de cuentos, llena de giros inesperados. Algunos pueden ser un poco pesados, pero cuando leés el final y descubrís cómo todo era importante, te das cuenta de que era necesario.
Ya lo dije antes, Macdonald era un puto genio. Esta colección de relatos de su detective, Lew Archer, me cautivó con cada una de sus incógnitas y misterios. Es increíble su capacidad para desentrañar y descubrir cómo se cometió el crimen, el móvil y, por supuesto, el asesino. Algunos casos pueden resultar bastante similares, es decir, como si siguiera un patrón, pero aun así te logra sorprender con finales impredecibles. Cada cuento es un desafío para Archer y a medida que te sumergís más profundo en sus investigaciones te vas perdiendo hasta decir: "No tengo la menor idea de lo que pueda pasar de ahora en adelante". Sin embargo, en algunos casos no sucede eso; creés que ya está todo resuelto, que es todo fácil, pero luego Macdonald te da una fuerte cachetada en las últimas páginas y es inevitable sentirse tonto. Hay otros en los que parece todo resuelto, y las restantes cincuenta palabras te cambian todo con un giro de 180° que te deja alelado.
Ya terminando, es una muy buena colección de cuentos, llena de giros inesperados. Algunos pueden ser un poco pesados, pero cuando leés el final y descubrís cómo todo era importante, te das cuenta de que era necesario.
February 27, 2018
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 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.
July 6, 2019
COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK/Novella 111 (of 250)
"Gone Girl" is the novella of focus here. One must wonder how often this title has been used.
HOOK = 4 stars: "It was a Friday night. I was tooling home from the Mexican border in a light blue convertible and a dark blue mood." That second line is so typical of Ross MacDonald: an author light on style and heavy on substance, and for me it's worth a 4th star: it doesn't call attention to itself, doesn't feel overwrought like Chandler or Hammett at times, it just reads really nice I think with just a hint of hard-boiled. "I had followed a man from Fresno to San Diego and lost him in the maze of streets in Old Town...He had crossed the border, and my instructions went no further than the United States." Lew then finds himself on the freeway with "the worst driver in the world...the heavy car [Cadillac] wove back and forth across the freeway, using 2 of its 4 lanes, sometimes 3...." Eventually, Lew Archer, exhausted, pulls off the freeway to the first motel he comes to, the Siesta. And there he finds trouble.
PACE = 4: I've read 7 Ross Macdonald novels, and he almost has one here, a subject matter easily expandable into a novel. But he made the right choice, imo.
PLOT = 3: Lew finds evidence of a murder at the Siesta motel and reason to check around the seaside area for someone who has lost a lot of blood and may be dead. Yes, he finds the Cadillac from the opening page, parked, and a dead man inside, a man who had been dying from a gunshot wound as he drove on the freeway (page 1). The owner of the hotel begs Lew not to report the murder to the cops and Lew agrees to at least investigate the situation for a fee.
PEOPLE = 4: Lew Archer, to me, is the smartest of all the series private investigators. He's not the toughest, but he sees people, their truths and lies, quickly. And he is tough enough to survive the bad guys. The motel owner, Mr. Salanda, is desparately protective of his young daughter, Ella, and she is just old enough to get into all sorts of problems. A sensitive kid named Donny has a big-time crush on her. And Mrs. Mabel Salanda, a big, forceful blonde, practically steals the show. But then there is Mr. Funk in Vegas with his gang of hoods.
ATMOSPHERE = 2: "Room fourteen was like any other middle-class motel room touched with the California-Spanish mania...A Rivera reproduction of a sleeping Mexican hung on the wall over the bed..." A description today that we'd call politically incorrect, and if you've never lived in Southern California, this description is a bit short. But in the book, Macdonald doesn't spend much more time on atmosphere than this brief description of a motel room. And the story could take place anywhere: the author doesn't integrate the story with the place.
SUMMARY: My rating is 3.4. Macdonald delivers, as usual, a solid plot with some surprises and a good set of characters.
BOOK/Novella 111 (of 250)
"Gone Girl" is the novella of focus here. One must wonder how often this title has been used.
HOOK = 4 stars: "It was a Friday night. I was tooling home from the Mexican border in a light blue convertible and a dark blue mood." That second line is so typical of Ross MacDonald: an author light on style and heavy on substance, and for me it's worth a 4th star: it doesn't call attention to itself, doesn't feel overwrought like Chandler or Hammett at times, it just reads really nice I think with just a hint of hard-boiled. "I had followed a man from Fresno to San Diego and lost him in the maze of streets in Old Town...He had crossed the border, and my instructions went no further than the United States." Lew then finds himself on the freeway with "the worst driver in the world...the heavy car [Cadillac] wove back and forth across the freeway, using 2 of its 4 lanes, sometimes 3...." Eventually, Lew Archer, exhausted, pulls off the freeway to the first motel he comes to, the Siesta. And there he finds trouble.
PACE = 4: I've read 7 Ross Macdonald novels, and he almost has one here, a subject matter easily expandable into a novel. But he made the right choice, imo.
PLOT = 3: Lew finds evidence of a murder at the Siesta motel and reason to check around the seaside area for someone who has lost a lot of blood and may be dead. Yes, he finds the Cadillac from the opening page, parked, and a dead man inside, a man who had been dying from a gunshot wound as he drove on the freeway (page 1). The owner of the hotel begs Lew not to report the murder to the cops and Lew agrees to at least investigate the situation for a fee.
PEOPLE = 4: Lew Archer, to me, is the smartest of all the series private investigators. He's not the toughest, but he sees people, their truths and lies, quickly. And he is tough enough to survive the bad guys. The motel owner, Mr. Salanda, is desparately protective of his young daughter, Ella, and she is just old enough to get into all sorts of problems. A sensitive kid named Donny has a big-time crush on her. And Mrs. Mabel Salanda, a big, forceful blonde, practically steals the show. But then there is Mr. Funk in Vegas with his gang of hoods.
ATMOSPHERE = 2: "Room fourteen was like any other middle-class motel room touched with the California-Spanish mania...A Rivera reproduction of a sleeping Mexican hung on the wall over the bed..." A description today that we'd call politically incorrect, and if you've never lived in Southern California, this description is a bit short. But in the book, Macdonald doesn't spend much more time on atmosphere than this brief description of a motel room. And the story could take place anywhere: the author doesn't integrate the story with the place.
SUMMARY: My rating is 3.4. Macdonald delivers, as usual, a solid plot with some surprises and a good set of characters.
July 10, 2017
The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator by Ross Macdonald is my first exposure to MacDonald's writing. I have enjoyed quite a few books by his wife, fellow mystery writer, Margaret Millar and have wanted to explore the world of Lew Archer, as created by MacDonald.
The book is a series of short stories featuring PI Archer and also a number of unfinished stories showing some of the other cases that Archer might have been involved in.
I enjoyed MacDonald's writing, in the style of Dashiell Hammett and John D. MacDonald and enjoyed PI Archer. Archer takes on cases where he feels a responsibility to the person hiring him or the person being investigated. In a number of cases, he just falls into by accident and wants to correct a wrong or just help a person in need. He never overcharges; $50 a day plus expenses and he doesn't like helping the Mob or being bought. He's an ex-boxer and officer from WWII and knows how to handle himself in a bad situation. He works in California with a small office on Sunset Boulevard. The book starts off with a nice biography of Lew Archer, his past and what makes him tick.
People get killed in his cases, sometimes by him, sometimes by someone else. There are nice little twists in each one, some not complex. You can figure out who is responsible, but the explanations are always interesting. MacDonald's description of the people and the surroundings are always on point and he has a nice, tidy way of getting out the facts and the stories. I enjoyed very much and now look forward to trying one of Lew Archer's cases in novel format. (4 stars)
The book is a series of short stories featuring PI Archer and also a number of unfinished stories showing some of the other cases that Archer might have been involved in.
I enjoyed MacDonald's writing, in the style of Dashiell Hammett and John D. MacDonald and enjoyed PI Archer. Archer takes on cases where he feels a responsibility to the person hiring him or the person being investigated. In a number of cases, he just falls into by accident and wants to correct a wrong or just help a person in need. He never overcharges; $50 a day plus expenses and he doesn't like helping the Mob or being bought. He's an ex-boxer and officer from WWII and knows how to handle himself in a bad situation. He works in California with a small office on Sunset Boulevard. The book starts off with a nice biography of Lew Archer, his past and what makes him tick.
People get killed in his cases, sometimes by him, sometimes by someone else. There are nice little twists in each one, some not complex. You can figure out who is responsible, but the explanations are always interesting. MacDonald's description of the people and the surroundings are always on point and he has a nice, tidy way of getting out the facts and the stories. I enjoyed very much and now look forward to trying one of Lew Archer's cases in novel format. (4 stars)
December 22, 2022
Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler probably wrote ten times more short stories than novels between the both of them. For Ross Macdonald, it's the opposite.
For this reason I've sometimes had a trepidation about reading the collected Lew Archer stories for the fear that it maybe just wasn't his forte. But this book puts that fear to rest, since even when doing Macdonald the disservice of collecting the sub-total of every single piece of his short fiction -- from enthusiastic but sometimes awkward pulp from the very first stages of his writing career, to unpublished stories that were later forgotten when they were expanded into full-length novels -- this book should probably be nowhere near as good as it is.
But even Macdonald finding his way, writing to popular interest, stumbling on good ideas but not executing them as well as he could, still results in some total stone classic detective stories that are, in some cases, probably on the same level as his novels.
Some favourites: "Gone Girl" (whose title was, yes, pilfered for another book you might have heard of), "The Sinister Habit", "Wild Goose Chase", and "Gilt-Edged Blonde", which itself feels like a near-perfect example of how to economically craft a short mystery story with absolutely no fat: only four characters, with 10 pages to set up the mystery and then 10 pages to solve it. It's a total marvel.
For this reason I've sometimes had a trepidation about reading the collected Lew Archer stories for the fear that it maybe just wasn't his forte. But this book puts that fear to rest, since even when doing Macdonald the disservice of collecting the sub-total of every single piece of his short fiction -- from enthusiastic but sometimes awkward pulp from the very first stages of his writing career, to unpublished stories that were later forgotten when they were expanded into full-length novels -- this book should probably be nowhere near as good as it is.
But even Macdonald finding his way, writing to popular interest, stumbling on good ideas but not executing them as well as he could, still results in some total stone classic detective stories that are, in some cases, probably on the same level as his novels.
Some favourites: "Gone Girl" (whose title was, yes, pilfered for another book you might have heard of), "The Sinister Habit", "Wild Goose Chase", and "Gilt-Edged Blonde", which itself feels like a near-perfect example of how to economically craft a short mystery story with absolutely no fat: only four characters, with 10 pages to set up the mystery and then 10 pages to solve it. It's a total marvel.
January 23, 2022
Si pudiera darle estrellas negativa a esta cosa, se las daría. Todas.
Es de las peores lecturas que hice en toda mi vida. Insoportable, infumable, denso como él solo. En los primeros relatos ni siquiera se podía entender qué poronga estaba sucediendo ya que, por lo visto, había que ratonear espacios y estaba toooooooooooooooooooooooodo juntito. Jamás te enterabas si habías pasado de un escenario a otro, de un personaje a otro, DE UNA SEMANA A OTRA.
Archer es todo lo que está mal en este mundo y, gracias a Dios, seres como él cada vez se extinguen más rápido. Una cosa es comprender la época y otra muy distinta es tener que fumárselo durante 600 páginas.
El denso es todo lo bueno para su siglo, joven, fuerte, galán (pero no baboso), inteligente, hábil, virtuoso, etc etc etc etc. ¿Y cuando se las da de casamentero? jaaaaa
Tener que aguantarme un personaje de esa índole fue castigo suficiente. Merezco paz hasta el día de mi muerte.
June 29, 2024
A must-have for Archer fans. Includes pre-Archer stories that give insight into the development of the character. The stories are all first-rate, with a surprising amount of gunplay--much more, on a per page basis than the novels. Included along with the complete stories is an insightful introduction by editor Tom Nolan and a collection of openings from stories left unfinished at MacDonald's death. Ranging from a few paragraphs to six or eight pages, they are as polished as the finished stories, and immensely fun to read. Each one leaves the reader wanting to know what happens next, feeling a mixture of frustration and delight.
November 30, 2023
I read these short stories in between other novels. I had finished all of the Lew Archer books and was happy to find this collection. Not all the stories are great but the writing is familiar and comfortable. I’m sorry I have no more Ross MacDonald to read.
November 27, 2024
my favorite crime writer.
January 9, 2020
No voy a negarlo. No sabía quién era Ross MacDonald.
Es verdad que en novela negra no estoy muy puesto. Sí, he leído algo de Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Thompson, pero poco más. Pero como fue un libro editado en los principios de Roja y Negra, llevada por entonces por Rodrigo Fresán, me fie de él. Y bien que hice, porque es un libro perfecto tanto para el coleccionista del escritor y de su detective Lew Archer como para el novato del cual soy ejemplo. Porque nos trae todos los relatos protagonizados por el detective así como unos comienzos de posibles cuentos que quedaron inconclusos. Todo ello con un interesante prólogo sobre el autor realizado por Fresán y otro en el que nos habla en modo biografía del detective. Este prólogo es realizado por el compilador americano, Tom Nolan.
En cuanto a los relatos en sí, casi todos me han gustado en mayor o menor medida, notándose que los primeros son más previsibles y algo más flojos, pero es que fueron escritos antes de cualquiera de sus novelas, y este hombre escribió 17 novelas protagonizadas por el detective, entre 1949 y 1976.
Lew Archer es un detective privado testarudo, insobornable, honrado, que no evita la acción si es necesaria. Todo ello acompañado de Buicks, whisky (aunque Archer no bebe tanto como Marlowe, por ejemplo), rubias platino fatales, vanidad, codicia y sobre todo, California... y narrado a la vieja usanza: frases cortas, mordaces, irónicas, directas, donde prevalecen los diálogos.
Sin duda a los que nos gusta Hammett o Chandler creo que tenemos que leer más a Macdonald y su Archer.
Un 7.75
Es verdad que en novela negra no estoy muy puesto. Sí, he leído algo de Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Thompson, pero poco más. Pero como fue un libro editado en los principios de Roja y Negra, llevada por entonces por Rodrigo Fresán, me fie de él. Y bien que hice, porque es un libro perfecto tanto para el coleccionista del escritor y de su detective Lew Archer como para el novato del cual soy ejemplo. Porque nos trae todos los relatos protagonizados por el detective así como unos comienzos de posibles cuentos que quedaron inconclusos. Todo ello con un interesante prólogo sobre el autor realizado por Fresán y otro en el que nos habla en modo biografía del detective. Este prólogo es realizado por el compilador americano, Tom Nolan.
En cuanto a los relatos en sí, casi todos me han gustado en mayor o menor medida, notándose que los primeros son más previsibles y algo más flojos, pero es que fueron escritos antes de cualquiera de sus novelas, y este hombre escribió 17 novelas protagonizadas por el detective, entre 1949 y 1976.
Lew Archer es un detective privado testarudo, insobornable, honrado, que no evita la acción si es necesaria. Todo ello acompañado de Buicks, whisky (aunque Archer no bebe tanto como Marlowe, por ejemplo), rubias platino fatales, vanidad, codicia y sobre todo, California... y narrado a la vieja usanza: frases cortas, mordaces, irónicas, directas, donde prevalecen los diálogos.
Sin duda a los que nos gusta Hammett o Chandler creo que tenemos que leer más a Macdonald y su Archer.
Un 7.75
August 20, 2017
Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer short stories display the same uniform excellence as his novels. The stories contained in THE ARCHER FILES have lesser build-up time than the novels however Macdonald's private eye thrives in the short form too. THE ARCHER FILES is all the proof anyone needs, every story is good; 'Gone Girl' and 'The Suicide' are astonishingly superb. There's no filler, unless you categorize the 11 unfinished tales as such. I consider them a bonus! I paid twenty bucks for FILES, the fragments alone are worth a hundred.
In the beginning the publishing industry was not kind to Lew Archer. Early paperback covers misled readers, but the smooth intelligent prose inside erased any ire mystery buyers may have felt at being hoodwinked. In the mid-sixties Bantam Books emblazoned `Lew Archer---the hardest of the hard-boiled dicks' across the top of all their paperback covers featuring Ross Macdonald's fairly unknown creation. The hardboiled blurb reinforced each cover, always a slightly out of focus photograph of the same man with a different woman. Those females seemed like mere decoration since the emphasis was always the male, an obvious hero who looked like a rugged Mike Hammer but dressed like James Bond on casino night. Bantam marketed nine or ten Archer novels with those very distinct photo covers; one of them was THE NAME IS ARCHER from where seven of the stories in THE ARCHER FILES were originally collected. `Midnight Blue' and `Sleeping Dog' are minor masterpieces from the sixties excluded from THE NAME IS ARCHER because they were not yet written. Revised editions of the collection include these additional two mysteries. Three of FILES' stories are from STRANGERS IN TOWN, two of them novelettes that became THE IVORY GRIN (Strangers In Town) and THE DOOMSTERS (The Angry Man). THE ARCHER FILES contains the entire contents of STRANGERS IN TOWN and the extended NAME IS ARCHER, and more.
Hollywood wasn't particularly kind either; Paul Newman's insistence on being Lew Harper instead of Archer played a large role in Archer's low recognition factor in American pop consciousness by virtue of robbing the cinematic version of the character of his real name. It didn't help that both Harper movies were unforgivably miscast and not very good. Harper chewed gum, an additional travesty.
In 1967 I finally broke down and bought Macdonald's WYCHERLY WOMAN novel. I read Spillane and Fleming so how bad could it be, right? Though only fourteen, I was immediately struck by the quality of Macdonald's engaging whodunit abilities and felt rather indignant that Bantam deliberately misrepresented Lew Archer's true nature. What I didn't realize as a youngster was those covers brilliantly lured droves of readers to Archer who ordinarily might not be interested in such an undemonstrative unassuming detective---readers who liked their private eyes harder boiled than Sherlock Holmes.
After THE WYCHERLY WOMAN (purposely alliterative of witchy woman, there are no accidents in Macdonald's writing) I read THE FAR SIDE OF THE DOLLAR and THE INSTANT ENEMY in quick succession. I liked the Archer books but wasn't hooked on the series until I read THE UNDERGROUND MAN and THE GOODBYE LOOK back-to-back in 1972 and was staggered by their excellence. Afterwards I collected all of Macdonald's titles. In the sixties the first four, THE MOVING TARGET, THE DROWNING POOL, THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE and THE IVORY GRIN were published by Pocket Books and scarcer than Bantam's editions, although I remember problems sourcing THE ZEBRA-STRIPED HEARSE and THE CHILL. You could find them if you combed through enough used book stores.
Forgive the digression regarding Macdonald's oeuvre, THE ARCHER FILES isn't afterthought leftovers, it's a necessary and important part of the compleat Lew Archer. As indispensable as the novels.
In the beginning the publishing industry was not kind to Lew Archer. Early paperback covers misled readers, but the smooth intelligent prose inside erased any ire mystery buyers may have felt at being hoodwinked. In the mid-sixties Bantam Books emblazoned `Lew Archer---the hardest of the hard-boiled dicks' across the top of all their paperback covers featuring Ross Macdonald's fairly unknown creation. The hardboiled blurb reinforced each cover, always a slightly out of focus photograph of the same man with a different woman. Those females seemed like mere decoration since the emphasis was always the male, an obvious hero who looked like a rugged Mike Hammer but dressed like James Bond on casino night. Bantam marketed nine or ten Archer novels with those very distinct photo covers; one of them was THE NAME IS ARCHER from where seven of the stories in THE ARCHER FILES were originally collected. `Midnight Blue' and `Sleeping Dog' are minor masterpieces from the sixties excluded from THE NAME IS ARCHER because they were not yet written. Revised editions of the collection include these additional two mysteries. Three of FILES' stories are from STRANGERS IN TOWN, two of them novelettes that became THE IVORY GRIN (Strangers In Town) and THE DOOMSTERS (The Angry Man). THE ARCHER FILES contains the entire contents of STRANGERS IN TOWN and the extended NAME IS ARCHER, and more.
Hollywood wasn't particularly kind either; Paul Newman's insistence on being Lew Harper instead of Archer played a large role in Archer's low recognition factor in American pop consciousness by virtue of robbing the cinematic version of the character of his real name. It didn't help that both Harper movies were unforgivably miscast and not very good. Harper chewed gum, an additional travesty.
In 1967 I finally broke down and bought Macdonald's WYCHERLY WOMAN novel. I read Spillane and Fleming so how bad could it be, right? Though only fourteen, I was immediately struck by the quality of Macdonald's engaging whodunit abilities and felt rather indignant that Bantam deliberately misrepresented Lew Archer's true nature. What I didn't realize as a youngster was those covers brilliantly lured droves of readers to Archer who ordinarily might not be interested in such an undemonstrative unassuming detective---readers who liked their private eyes harder boiled than Sherlock Holmes.
After THE WYCHERLY WOMAN (purposely alliterative of witchy woman, there are no accidents in Macdonald's writing) I read THE FAR SIDE OF THE DOLLAR and THE INSTANT ENEMY in quick succession. I liked the Archer books but wasn't hooked on the series until I read THE UNDERGROUND MAN and THE GOODBYE LOOK back-to-back in 1972 and was staggered by their excellence. Afterwards I collected all of Macdonald's titles. In the sixties the first four, THE MOVING TARGET, THE DROWNING POOL, THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE and THE IVORY GRIN were published by Pocket Books and scarcer than Bantam's editions, although I remember problems sourcing THE ZEBRA-STRIPED HEARSE and THE CHILL. You could find them if you combed through enough used book stores.
Forgive the digression regarding Macdonald's oeuvre, THE ARCHER FILES isn't afterthought leftovers, it's a necessary and important part of the compleat Lew Archer. As indispensable as the novels.
December 25, 2017
I've oft considered Ross MacDonald a solid example of a novelist who got by writing the same book over and over again. That is not meant to denigrate the man's work. Ross MacDonald is the Holy Spirit to Raymond Chandler's Son and Dashiell Hammett's Father in the Holy Trinity of Classic American Hard-Boiled PI Detective Fiction (Mickey Spillane would probably be like an Apostle or lesser but influential Pope). The Lew Archer stories I've found to be a bit more melancholy or wistful.
MacDonald's novels all tend to focus around the same themes, e.g. broken families (sometimes looking for their lost members) and feature the same elements. This recycling or literary bricolage can readily be evidenced in how quite a few of the stories in this collection are clearly rewrites of one another (same basic plot, same character types).
Also, making this worth the time of any aficionado of MacDonald or detective fiction writing in general is that the last section of this book features beginnings of incomplete stories, fragments that MacDonald never ended up using.
MacDonald's novels all tend to focus around the same themes, e.g. broken families (sometimes looking for their lost members) and feature the same elements. This recycling or literary bricolage can readily be evidenced in how quite a few of the stories in this collection are clearly rewrites of one another (same basic plot, same character types).
Also, making this worth the time of any aficionado of MacDonald or detective fiction writing in general is that the last section of this book features beginnings of incomplete stories, fragments that MacDonald never ended up using.
September 26, 2019
If you love the detective from The Chill or The Underground Man, this ain’t him. Nearly all the short stories come from the time Ross Macdonald/Kevin Millar was following the Chandler school (pre-1958), so the empathetic, inquiring edition of Lew Archer is mostly absent except for a handful of stories toward the end and, interestingly, an unpublished story from 1950 called “Strangers in Town”, later cannibalized for The Ivory Grin and the short story “Gone Girl”. Still, some of the stories carry an emotional wallop, especially The Suicide and Midnight Blue, and Macdonald’s penchant for intricate plotting appears in even these short pieces. Also unexpectedly interesting: the first-pages fragments of possible Archer stories from Macdonald's notes, gathered together in a back section called "Case Notes". All-too-brief, but they're wonderful short pieces in themselves, even if they wind up like the Sherlock stories Dr. John Watson mentions but never writes.
March 10, 2021
The Archer short stories are as excellent as the detective novels. The writing of Macdonald's earlier works were precursors to further developed books. The quotes are always insightful in the understanding to the underlying themes, nature and subtlety of the characters and plots:
"Hatred. Greed. Jealousy. The three emotions that cause most crime. Impersonal love of inflicting pain is a fourth."
"She arranged herself in a padded metal chaise and made a sign for me to sit near her. 'Smoke if you like. I've given it up. It's so moral-building to have given up one of the vices. Of course I'd never have done it with our that cancer scare to help me. Sheer terror can be awfully useful, don't you think?'...
'I'm thirty-four', she said. 'Entre vous. I'll soon be thirty-five. I don't mind telling may age as long as I look younger than I am. It's the other way around that hurts.'"
"Hatred. Greed. Jealousy. The three emotions that cause most crime. Impersonal love of inflicting pain is a fourth."
"She arranged herself in a padded metal chaise and made a sign for me to sit near her. 'Smoke if you like. I've given it up. It's so moral-building to have given up one of the vices. Of course I'd never have done it with our that cancer scare to help me. Sheer terror can be awfully useful, don't you think?'...
'I'm thirty-four', she said. 'Entre vous. I'll soon be thirty-five. I don't mind telling may age as long as I look younger than I am. It's the other way around that hurts.'"
October 12, 2021
Among the hard boiled mystery writers, MacDonald is my absolute favorite. His character Archer is one that always does the right thing, even if it hurts himself doing so. Archer files is a collection of short stories that MacDonald wrote and some were in fact written for another character and later on they were edited and the name Archer was replaced the previous personality. This is somewhat evident if you have read other Archer books. You can tell that he is a bit off and not himself in some situations. You think that Archer would not say that or would do that. But it is a MacDonald book and you have to have it if you are a fan. The stories are entertaining and some are predictable but it is part of the collection.
March 22, 2018
These are almost novella rather than short story length and they follow macdonald’s usual pattern of mysteries with buried, domestic secrets - crimes hiding each other. For me they are also a cultural history of developing California post war, as the state was taking off: the motels, roadhouses cars and free ways as well as a population of people coming out of the depression and WWII along with the wealthy. There is also something slightly febrile, even neurotic, about the atmosphere - mid century jitters and a society just getting used to psychoanalysis so that everyone, including archer, is a bit brittle.
December 7, 2022
Bereft, that's how I feel now having finished with Lew Archer. 18 novels, a collection of short stories and, contained in the Archer Files, the beginnings of several other stories never completed. It shows what a fine writer Macdonald was that the beginnings of stories you know will go nowhere are still a treat.
This book also contains a biography of Archer put together by Ross Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan using information gleaned from everything Macdonald wrote on Archer.
Maybe it's one for the completist/obsessive but that's what I am, unabashedly.
So long Lew...
This book also contains a biography of Archer put together by Ross Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan using information gleaned from everything Macdonald wrote on Archer.
Maybe it's one for the completist/obsessive but that's what I am, unabashedly.
So long Lew...
December 16, 2022
Las historias cortas de Lew Archer sirven como semblanza del particular investigador privado: Un sujeto honesto en la línea de los antihéroes chandlerianos, con un sólido código ético que lo lleva a descartar la dureza hard-boiled por la aproximación cerebral y un desplante anclado en su apariencia y modales. Tan pesimista como sentimental, su implicancia en cada caso termina acusando las grietas en un sueño americano de linóleo y cócteles baratos, cuya prosperidad es tan ostentosa como frágil. Un punto diferente para la serie negra clásica.
June 17, 2017
Ross Macdonal was a great writer, and Lew Archer is a fantastic creation, but his stories need the length of a novel to breathe, grow, develop.
The short stories are lacking in language and details, while the second half of the book, which contain never-used opening chapters, are a tease to something never realized.
Still worth it for the fans, thought.
The short stories are lacking in language and details, while the second half of the book, which contain never-used opening chapters, are a tease to something never realized.
Still worth it for the fans, thought.
June 13, 2023
I've read very few crime short stories that I've liked. The authors seem to feel that they only have time to deal with plot details of "who (or how) done it". MacDonald's concise writing not only develops Archer's character, it gives the new and minor people life. He concentrates on all the people involved rather than simply the plotline.
October 8, 2018
This collection of Ross Macdonald's stories is a showcase of how great and literary a writer he was. Included at the end of the book are a number of tantalizing sketches of books or stories he left unfinished when he died. I would have liked to have seen where he took quite a few of them.
February 25, 2019
Gets five stars not because of the quality of the stories, per se. The first several are pretty bad actually. But it’s amazing to see Macdonald develop his craft and his voice and grow into the author he became with the Lew Archer books.
November 6, 2021
The complete Lew Archer short stories. On the whole the novels are better, but there are some gems in here, not to mention incidents and characters that later appear in some of the novels. Probably something that appeals mainly to completists (like me).
May 6, 2018
A good collection of short stories by Macdonald, written between the late 40s and mid 60s. The last 60 pages consists of eleven fragments or unfinished stories found among his papers.
September 13, 2021
Excellent!
Lots of short manageable stories. More, even shorter stories, toward the end of the book. One better than the next.
Lots of short manageable stories. More, even shorter stories, toward the end of the book. One better than the next.
June 1, 2024
Very interesting collection. Worth reading whether or not you’re a true fan of the Archer novels.
June 16, 2017
Raymond Chandler he ain't.
The writing has little flair, and the occasional use of an esoteric or comlex word seems self-conscious on the part of the writer. The actual mysteries are fairly edestrain and solvable, but these aren't whodunnits in the Agatha Christie Mallowan sense. Nor do they have realism of Dashiell Hammett. They do have some sense of a more modern Los Angeles than Chander wrote about. The editor does an excellent job of gathering all the data from the stories into a oherent biography of lew Archer, so that's interesting. The sort of thing you can't do for either Marlowe or Spade.
It's testament to William Goldman's ability as a screenwriter that he wa able to take the character and one novel and get such a good movie as Harper out of them.
The final piece in this book "Winnipeg 1929" is actually pretty god and moving and I do wonder what McDonalds might have been if he had steered away from detective fiction and swum more in the mainstream.
The writing has little flair, and the occasional use of an esoteric or comlex word seems self-conscious on the part of the writer. The actual mysteries are fairly edestrain and solvable, but these aren't whodunnits in the Agatha Christie Mallowan sense. Nor do they have realism of Dashiell Hammett. They do have some sense of a more modern Los Angeles than Chander wrote about. The editor does an excellent job of gathering all the data from the stories into a oherent biography of lew Archer, so that's interesting. The sort of thing you can't do for either Marlowe or Spade.
It's testament to William Goldman's ability as a screenwriter that he wa able to take the character and one novel and get such a good movie as Harper out of them.
The final piece in this book "Winnipeg 1929" is actually pretty god and moving and I do wonder what McDonalds might have been if he had steered away from detective fiction and swum more in the mainstream.
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