When he died in 1983, Ross Macdonald was the best-known and most highly regarded crime-fiction writer in America. Long considered the rightful successor to the mantles of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and his Lew Archer-novels were hailed by The New York Times as "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American."
Now, in the first full-length biography of this extraordinary and influential writer, a much fuller picture emerges of a man to whom hiding things came as second nature. While it was no secret that Ross Macdonald was the pseudonym...

This book is a rocket ride from my childhood to the end of my dreams. The road has many pot holes filled with gut wrenching laughter and spiced with the bitter sweet memories of lost friendships. The road is not paved with gold but the black tears of unfinished lives. There are forks in the road that lead to complete terror and others to utter joy. It is at times impossible to separate the two; it is at times insanity. This is not a tale of a life well planned but one of being bucked off and climbing back on. It sometimes runs amok, but these friendships are made to be bent, never broken....

This book is a rocket ride from my childhood to the end of my dreams. The road has many pot holes filled with gut wrenching laughter and spiced with the bitter sweet memories of lost friendships. The road is not paved with gold but the black tears of unfinished lives. There are forks in the road that lead to complete terror and others to utter joy. It is at times impossible to separate the two; it is at times insanity. This is not a tale of a life well planned but one of being bucked off and climbing back on. It sometimes runs amok, but these friendships are made to be bent, never broken....

The three novels collected in this second volume in the Library of America Ross Macdonald edition represent for many readers the summit of American crime writing. They remain thrilling for their searing psychological truth-telling, daring flights of narrative invention, and their keenly observed picture of the manners and morals of a particular time and place (Southern California in the early 1960s). Each reflects Macdonald's enduring concern with the hidden crimes and agonizing dysfunctions that haunt families from one generation to the next. In The Zebra-Striped Hearse, a father's...

This is a story about two women with a relationship neither is aware of. When they are thrown together, the connection is traumatic for both them and fifteen year old Milo.