The Galton Case

The Barnes & Noble ReviewIn 1959, Ross Macdonald published what is generally considered his breakthrough novel, The Galton Case, a complex, psychologically acute account of the search for personal identity, and of the destructive power of the unresolved past. Macdonald ultimately established himself as one of three dominant forces in the development of the modern private-eye novel. The other two, of course, were Dashiell Hammett, who virtually invented the form, and Raymond Chandler, who brought wit, attitude, and a highly evolved sense of language, elevating detective fiction to a whole new level. Macdonald -- the pseudonym of California-born novelist Kenneth Millar -- was the direct literary descendent of these two titans, and he worked comfortably within that inherited tradition for a number of years, producing several excellent, if generic, novels featuring private investigator Lew Archer. (Archer, incidentally, was named after Sam Spade s partner, Miles Archer, who is murdered in the opening pages of