Genre: Book
Grade: A
Notable People: Ross Macdonald
Title: The Drowning Pool
Review: I was reading a review of a current mystery writer I am interested in and they referred to this book as one of the best ever-so got the library to track it down and gave it a read. MacDonald’s Lew Archer, which he wrote from mid-40s till his 1983 death, is the heir apparent to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe- think dark noir, one of the great literature types to emerge from the American canon. This book is riveting from start to finish, which you will do quickly. Don’t like murder mysteries? Don’t be fooled. In a retrospective of his work, the LA times said “MacDonald should not be limited to connoisseurs of mystery fiction. His worth and quality far surpass the limitations of the form”. This is great stuff- and Archer is the true /American archetypal hero in every way.