Find a Victim — Part Two

by | Jun 29, 2022 | Blog Posts, Find a Victim

                    “Great Starts Can Lead to Muddled Middles”                                     –Ross Macdonald, speaking of Find a Victim       Macdonald was always sensitive to the importance of his first scene. He employed many different...

Find a Victim — Part One

by | Jun 24, 2022 | Blog Posts, Find a Victim

                                WHAT THE CRITICS SAY       “Find a Victim is the noir-est of Macdonald’s early Archer novels . . .  the bottom line of Find a Victim is negative . . . Macdonald finds the penal code next to irrelevant in describing or...

MEET ME AT THE MORGUE Part Ten

by | Jun 19, 2022 | Blog Posts, Meet Me at the Morgue

                                                                                                                                   SPOILER ALERT              Macdonald Sidelined Archer Without a Good Reason     Meet Me at the Morgue is a fine mystery....

MEET ME AT THE MORGUE Part Nine

by | Jun 14, 2022 | Blog Posts, Meet Me at the Morgue

SPOILER ALERT                                                  Masterful But not Perfect Plotting   Peter Wolfe, in Dreamers Who Live Their Dreams, rightly calls this a “tightly built novel.”  Everyone who is important to the resolution of the mystery is on...

MEET ME AT THE MORGUE Part Eight

by | Jun 9, 2022 | Blog Posts, Meet Me at the Morgue

SPOILER ALERT                                        Wrapping it Up        The reader will no doubt have a sense of relief that the trip from Pacific Point to San Diego was not at gunpoint. Helen has been through enough for one week. More practically, if Amy...