Thanks for highlighting this book, Brian. I only just
recently started reading hardboiled fiction, and am
completely enthralled by Ross MacDonald and Lew Archer. I'm
reading the novels in chronological order, and am looking
forward to reading these stories. Before I read "The Moving
Target" I was planning on starting at the beginning with
Hammett and Chandler, but now I'm in no hurry to read them. I
get such pleasure from reading MacDonald's prose that I could
stay in his world forever.
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Thornton"
<tieresias@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Fellow Rare Birds-
>
> Just picked up this little gem (the trade paperback,
not the fifty
dollar hardback with "extras"), and am thrilled to have this
interesting retrospective of Ross MacDonald's short work
featuring the inimitable Lew Archer. Has anyone else read it?
From the back cover:
>
> "THE ARCHER FILES for the first time collects all
the brief Archer
fiction: the stories from MacDonald's 1955 paperback-original
THE NAME IS ARCHER, the additional tales included in the Otto
Penzler- edited 1977 volume LEW ARCHER: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR,
and the three then-unknown novellas presented in Crippen
& Landru's 2001 book STRANGERS IN TOWN. Also included in
THE ARCHER FILES are several lengthy, never-before-published
fragments of unfinished Macdonald stories: 'case notes,' as
it were, from the files of Lew Archer."
>
> I found this collection irresistible, especially in
light of the
inclusion of the so-called "case notes," which are really
just the first several pages of a number of what turned out
to be uncompleted stories. I've found these interesting
going, an opportunity to see how MacDonald got started on a
story over several different phases of his writing career,
beginning with a 1952 fragment with a wonderful title
("Heyday in the Blood"), and ending with 1965's "100
Pesos"
(the stories themselves begin much earlier, with "Find the
Woman" and "Death by Water," fboth rom 1946.
>
> For those Rare Birds who haven't experienced the
work of Ross
MacDonald, I think THE ARCHER FILES could be a welcome entree
into the world of Lew Archer for you, and since it's made up
entirely of short-stories and novellas, it's a potentially
minimal commitment. Nolan has also included an interesting,
speculative "biographical essay" based upon an exhaustive
reading of MacDonald's entire body of work (he cites various
comments Archer dropped here and there throughout the essay),
which, if not necessarily authentic, is certainly
provocative, and therefore worth a look.
>
> Someone wrote here recently about Chandler's short
fiction, lauding
it as being superior in many ways to his novels. I agree with
that sentiment, and fortunate indeed was I that I picked up
the TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS as my initial foray into
Chandler's writing back when I was a teenager. I don't think
that MacDonald's short stuff is "better" than his novels, but
because he doesn't have a couple of hundred pages in which to
spin one of his famous (infamous?) byzantine plots, it's
definitely easier to keep track of the other
characters!
>
> All the Best-
>
> Brian Thornton
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
>
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