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On Crime Writing
First edition, first printing, trade issue. Bruccoli A25.1.a . 45, 3 pages. stiff paper wrappers.. 12mo..
- GenresNonfictionWritingMystery
45 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1973
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About the author
Ross Macdonald
160 books816 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 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 24, 2020
2020 reread: Note Writing the Galton Case is probably best read shortly after said novel. Didn't get much out of this today as my memory of the novel is too faded. The Writer as Detective Hero is more accessible. I mentioned both are collected in "Self-Portrait", they are also in the Library of America collection Four Novels of the 1950s.
---- Original review ----
Ross Macdonald, you put the A in awesome. Long time aficionados and students of the hardboiled genre may not find much new here, but his comments on Hammett and Chandler definitely expanded my perspective on their work.
Contains two short essays: The Writer as Detective Hero (16 pages) and Writing the Galton Case (21 pages). Both are also collected in Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly Into The Past. Out of print and generally selling for more than cover price, probably not worth tracking down unless you're a Macdonald completist, but short enough for any fan of hardboiled fiction with an interest in analytical or writer's perspective to set aside a few minutes for if you stumble across it.
---- Original review ----
Ross Macdonald, you put the A in awesome. Long time aficionados and students of the hardboiled genre may not find much new here, but his comments on Hammett and Chandler definitely expanded my perspective on their work.
Contains two short essays: The Writer as Detective Hero (16 pages) and Writing the Galton Case (21 pages). Both are also collected in Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly Into The Past. Out of print and generally selling for more than cover price, probably not worth tracking down unless you're a Macdonald completist, but short enough for any fan of hardboiled fiction with an interest in analytical or writer's perspective to set aside a few minutes for if you stumble across it.
August 9, 2022
A nice little book with two insightful essays. It is of no interest to Macdonald's non-fans, but if you like his Lew Archer novels this is really a must for you to read.
April 14, 2012
Two short essays -- of which the first (The Writer as Detective Hero) contains some real gems of advice; the second, on writing the Galton Case, is less interesting.
I haven't read any MacDonald -- but this book has made me want to.
One point RMacD. makes is that the first "mature" book he wrote -- breaking free of the conventions of hardboiled narrator/hero -- was the Doomsters. From then on, he was a different writer (he says).
I haven't read any MacDonald -- but this book has made me want to.
One point RMacD. makes is that the first "mature" book he wrote -- breaking free of the conventions of hardboiled narrator/hero -- was the Doomsters. From then on, he was a different writer (he says).
November 13, 2020
I paid too much for this little volume (just 45 pages) but it was the only way I knew of to be able to read the two essays contained within. The first is called The Writer As Detective Hero and contains some very interesting observations about Hammett, Chandler, Poe(!) and Macdonald/Millar himself.
The second essay is the real reason I got the book: it’s titled Writing The Galton Case. Most interesting is the brief description of the author’s approach to writing a Lew Archer novel, where he spends a long time amassing random phrases, ideas, images and so forth until an idea shapes itself sufficiently for him to pursue it in a more directed style. A fascinating thing to read but by no means necessary to enjoy his novels.
The second essay is the real reason I got the book: it’s titled Writing The Galton Case. Most interesting is the brief description of the author’s approach to writing a Lew Archer novel, where he spends a long time amassing random phrases, ideas, images and so forth until an idea shapes itself sufficiently for him to pursue it in a more directed style. A fascinating thing to read but by no means necessary to enjoy his novels.
August 27, 2020
Described appropriately enough as a "chapbook", this is two essays which taste more like memoir than anything. Macdonald's own observations on crime fiction might be somewhat enlightening but it is not the instructive tome the title suggests. Well-written but lacking in direction or real substance.
March 31, 2019
Less on the mechanics of writing than a discussion of the connection between MacDonald and his characters.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews