Archives: Ross Macdonald

The first real-life private eye; Neil Sheehan; more crimes against English; newsletter, Jan. 26, 2018

January 29, 2018 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: newsletter.

This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email (4,302) list on Friday, January 26, 2018. Hi,  Unseasonably warm weather in East Tennessee last weekend allowed us to check on the beehives, and I am happy to report that both of my hives have bees! This is good news. The biggest challenge a beekeeper has • Read More »

Ross Macdonald takes hard-boiled fiction to new levels of style and plot

January 18, 2018 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: fiction, journalism, Private eye, writers, writing.

Just when the reading world thought that the hard-boiled detective novel had reached its zenith with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, along comes Ross Macdonald. The similarities among the lives of Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald (whose real name was Kenneth Millar) are striking and significant: All had difficult and disruptive childhoods. Each, for a time, • Read More »