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...

MEET ME AT THE MORGUE Part Seven

by | Jun 4, 2022 | Blog Posts, Meet Me at the Morgue

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  SPOILER ALERT  ...