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  • Published: 1 June 2016
  • ISBN: 9781598534795
  • Imprint: Library of America
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 792
  • RRP: $69.99

Ross Macdonald: Three Novels of the Early 1960s (LOA #279)

The Zebra-Striped Hearse / The Chill / The Far Side of the Dollar



In these three novels, written during a remarkable five-year period, Ross Macdonald elaborated on his chosen theme of families destroyed by hidden guilt with a new assurance, uniting his genius for intricate narrative structure with a profound compassion for his anguished characters. They prompted Anthony Boucher to make the following statement in the New York Times: "Without in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either of them."

The three novels collected in this second volume in the Library of America Ross Macdonald edition represent for many readers the summit of American crime writing. They remain thrilling for their searing psychological truth-telling, daring flights of narrative invention, and their keenly observed picture of the manners and morals of a particular time and place (Southern California in the early 1960s). Each reflects Macdonald’s enduring concern with the hidden crimes and agonizing dysfunctions that haunt families from one generation to the next. In The Zebra-Striped Hearse, a father’s attempt to protect his daughter from “the complete and utter personal disaster” of marriage to a troubled drifter sends private detective Lew Archer on a perplexing and increasingly bloody trail that leads him from Mexico to Lake Tahoe and finally into the maze of a tragically splintered identity. In The Chill, the search for a young bride gone missing uncovers a succession of seemingly unrelated crimes committed over a period of decades, as Archer finds himself “a ghost from the present haunting a bloody moment in the past.” Another hunt for a missing person—this time a young man escaped from an elite reform school—provides the impetus for The Far Side of the Dollar, which Macdonald’s friend Eudora Welty considered “securely among your strongest and best . . . a beauty that just gets better.”

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

  • Published: 1 June 2016
  • ISBN: 9781598534795
  • Imprint: Library of America
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 792
  • RRP: $69.99

About the author

Ross Macdonald

Ross MacDonald served as president of The Mystery Writers of America in 1965, received the Silver Dagger in 1964 and the Gold Dagger in 1965 from The British Crime Writers Association, and in 1981, received The Eye, the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Private Eye Writers of America.

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Praise for Ross Macdonald: Three Novels of the Early 1960s (LOA #279)

Praise for ROSS MACDONALD: FOUR NOVELS OF THE 1950s
"You should read Macdonald for the reason you read any great writer -- for the thrill of his language and vision." -- Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

"A superb collection. All four of these novels are excellent whodunnits." -- Charles Finch, USA Today

"An extraordinary compilation." --BBC.com

"The inclusion of Ross Macdonald in the Library of America represents recognition of a brilliant writer whose power of imagination and moral force transcend any genre or limitation." --Memphis Commercial Appeal