Publication Order of Lew Archer Books
| The Moving Target | 1949 |
| The Drowning Pool | 1950 |
| The Way Some People Die | 1951 |
| The Ivory Grin / Marked for Murder | 1952 |
| Find a Victim | 1954 |
| The Barbarous Coast | 1956 |
| The Doomsters | 1958 |
| The Galton Case | 1959 |
| The Wycherly Woman | 1961 |
| The Zebra-Striped Hearse | 1962 |
| The Chill | 1964 |
| The Far Side of the Dollar | 1965 |
| Black Money | 1966 |
| The Instant Enemy | 1968 |
| The Goodbye Look | 1969 |
| The Underground Man | 1971 |
| Sleeping Beauty | 1973 |
| The Blue Hammer | 1976 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Dark Tunnel / I Die Slowly | 1944 |
| Trouble Follows Me / Night Train | 1946 |
| Blue City | 1947 |
| The Three Roads | 1948 |
| Meet Me at the Morgue / Experience with Evil | 1953 |
| The Ferguson Affair | 1960 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| The Name Is Archer | 1955 |
| Lew Archer: Private Investigator | 1977 |
| Strangers in Town | 2001 |
| The Archer Files | 2007 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| On Crime Writing | 1973 |
| Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly Into the Past | 1981 |
About Ross Macdonald
Ross Macdonald was the pen name of Kenneth Millar, an American-Canadian crime writer born in 1915. He is best known for the 18 novels featuring the Southern California private detective Lew Archer, published between 1949 and 1976.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in Kitchener, Ontario, the home town of his Canadian parents. His father left when he was four, and he and his mother lived with a series of relatives. He graduated from the University of Western Ontario and worked as a high school teacher. In 1938 he married Margaret Sturm, who became a successful mystery writer herself as Margaret Millar. He served at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, the year the family settled in Santa Barbara, and later completed a PhD at the University of Michigan with a dissertation on Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
His first four novels, beginning with “The Dark Tunnel” (1944), appeared under his own name. To avoid confusion with his wife he published “The Moving Target” (1949) as John Macdonald, then wrote as John Ross Macdonald, and finally settled on Ross Macdonald so that he would not be mistaken for John D. MacDonald.
“The Moving Target” was the first Lew Archer novel, although the detective had already appeared in the 1946 short story “Find the Woman”. Most of the books are set in and around Santa Barbara, which becomes the fictional Santa Teresa. The plots often turn on family secrets that go back a generation or more, and on sons and daughters who have gone missing.
“The Moving Target” was filmed as “Harper” (1966) with Paul Newman, who returned in “The Drowning Pool” (1975), and “The Underground Man” became a television film in 1974. “The Chill” won the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger and “The Far Side of the Dollar” the Gold Dagger. The Mystery Writers of America made him a Grand Master in 1974. “The Goodbye Look”, “The Underground Man” and “Sleeping Beauty” all reached the New York Times bestseller list.
The last Archer novel was “The Blue Hammer” (1976). Macdonald died in Santa Barbara in 1983. Two posthumous collections edited by his biographer Tom Nolan followed: “Strangers in Town” (2001) and “The Archer Files” (2007).
Photo: Unknown author, from the jacket of The Blue Hammer (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).