There are countless Ross Macdonald courses, tutorials, articles available online, but for some, having a book is still a necessity to learn. This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
- The Chill (1996)
- The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator (Lew Archer Series) (2015)
- The Moving Target (1998)
- The Galton Case (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1996)
- Black Money (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1996)
- The Blue Hammer (Lew Archer Series) (2008)
- Find a Victim: A Lew Archer Novel (2001)
- The Wycherly Woman (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1998)
- Sleeping Beauty (2000)
- The Drowning Pool (1996)
- The Ivory Grin (Lew Archer Series) (2007)
- The Barbarous Coast (Lew Archer Series) (2007)
- The Way Some Archer Series) (2007)
- The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1996)
- The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1998)
The Chill (1996)
In The Chill a distraught young man hires private investigator Lew Archer to track down his runaway bride. But no sooner has he found Dolly Kincaid than Archer finds himself entangled in two murders, one twenty years old, the other so recent that the blood is still wet. What ensues is a detective novel of nerve-racking suspense, desperately believable characters, and one of the most intricate plots ever spun by an American crime writer.
The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator (Lew Archer Series) (2015)
No matter what cases private eye Lew Archer takes on—a burglary, a runaway, or a disappeared person—the trail always leads to tangled family secrets and murder.
The Moving Target (1998)
The first book in Ross Macdonald’s acclaimed Lew Archer series introduces the detective who redefined the role of the American private eye and gave the crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity only hinted at before.Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company.
The Galton Case (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1996)
Lew Archer returns in this gripping mystery, widely recognized as one of acclaimed mystery writer Ross Macdonald’s very best, about the search for the long lost heir of the wealthy Galton family. Almost twenty years have passed since Anthony Galton disappeared, along with a suspiciously streetwise bride and several thousand do…
Black Money (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1996)
When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on the suspiciously suave Frenchman who’s run off with his client’s girlfriend, it looks like a simple case of alienated affections. Things look different when the mysterious foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts. Black Money is Ross Macdonald at his finest, baring the skull beneath the untanned skin of Southern California’s high society.
The Blue Hammer (Lew Archer Series) (2008)
The desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness and only Detective Lew Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art.Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Archer, but that was before the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer find himself smack in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared.
Find a Victim: A Lew Archer Novel (2001)
Las Cruces wasn’t a place most travelers would think to stop. But after private investigator Lew Archer plays the good samaritan and picks up a bloodied hitchhiker, he finds himself in town for a few days awaiting a murder inquest.
The Wycherly Woman (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1998)
Phoebe Wycherly was missing two months before her wealthy father hired Archer to find her. That was plenty of time for a young girl who wanted to disappear to do so thoroughly–or for someone to make her disappear.
Sleeping Beauty (2000)
In , Lew Archer finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands–including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of Nembutal, a six-figure ransom, and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach. Here is Ross Macdonald’s masterful tale of buried memories, the consequences of arrogance, and the anguished relations between parents and their children.
The Drowning Pool (1996)
When a millionaire matriarch is found floating face down in the family pool, the prime suspects are her good-for-nothing son and his seductive teenage daughter. In The Drowning Pool, Lew Archer takes this case in the L.A. suburbs and encounters a moral wasteland of corporate greed and family hatred—and sufficient motive for a dozen murders.
The Ivory Grin (Lew Archer Series) (2007)
Traveling from sleazy motels to stately seaside manors, The Ivory Grin is one of Lew Archer’s most violent and macabre cases ever.A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he’s being fed a line, but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts the case.
The Barbarous Coast (Lew Archer Series) (2007)
The beautiful, high-diving blonde had Hollywood dreams and stars in her eyes but now she seems to have disappeared without a trace. Hired by her hotheaded husband and her rummy “uncle,” Lew Archer sniffs around Malibu and finds the stink of blackmail, blood-money, and murder on every pricey silk shirt.
The Way Some Archer Series) (2007)
In a rundown house in Santa Monica, Mrs. Samuel Lawrence presses fifty crumpled bills into Lew Archer’s hand and asks him to find her wandering daughter, Galatea. Described as ‘crazy for men’ and without discrimination, she was last seen driving off with small-time gangster Joe Tarantine, a hophead hood with a rep for violence. Archer traces the hidden trail from San Francisco slum alleys to the luxury of Palm Springs, traveling through an urban wilderness of drugs and viciousness.
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1996)
As a mysterious fire rages through the hills above a privileged town in Southern California, Archer tracks a missing child who may be the pawn in a marital struggle or the victim of a bizarre kidnapping. What he uncovers amid the ashes is murder—and a trail of motives as combustible as gasoline. The Underground Man is a detective novel of merciless suspense and tragic depth, with an unfaltering insight into the moral ambiguities at the heart of California’s version of…
The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (1998)
Strictly speaking, Lew Archer is only supposed to dig up the dirt on a rich man’s suspicious soon-to-be son-in-law. But in no time at all Archer is following a trail of corpses from the citrus belt to Mazatlan. And then there is the zebra-striped hearse and its crew of beautiful, sunburned surfers, whose path seems to keep crossing the son-in-law’s—and Archer’s—in a powerful, fast-paced novel of murder on the California coast.
Best Ross Macdonald Books You Must Read
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some ross macdonald books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
The Truman Gumshoes: The Postwar Detective Fiction of Mickey Spillane, Ross Macdonald, Wade Miller and Bart Spicer
Author(s): J.K. Van Dover
ID: 3224747, Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc, Year: 2022, Size: 8 Mb, Format: pdf
Fatty legs: a true story
Author(s): Amini-Holmes, Liz;Jordan-Fenton, Christy;Pokiak-Fenton, Margaret;Pokiak-Fenton, Margaret-Olemaun
ID: 2596295, Publisher: Annick Press Ltd;W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, Year: 2020;2012, Size: 5 Mb, Format: epub
Public finance in Canada
Author(s): Rosen, Harvey S.;Snoddon, Tracy;Wen, Jean-François
ID: 2757798, Publisher: W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, Year: 2020, Size: 13 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not errorless. Some books are really best-sellers according to Los Angeles Times, others are drafted by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.