Nolan shows admirable gumshoe ability in peeling back the mask of a tightly controlled man who rose to fame and riches from a wretched Dickensian childhood, but was so shamed and damaged by the experience that he remained hidden and enigmatic in adulthood. In "Ross Macdonald," biographer Tom Nolan takes on a subject as complex and elusive as any character that Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald was his pen name) created in his layered novels. Two of the crime novel trinity, Hammett and Chandler, have been the subjects of literary biographies, and now it's Macdonald's turn. They helped define California for others as a magnet for drifters, a rootless place where culture ran no deeper than suntans and where guilty secrets lay buried like land mines. Hired out to clients in Los Angeles and Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer solved crimes in what everyone understood was Santa Barbara. The Golden State's most lasting contribution to modern fiction may turn out to be the hard-boiled private eye.
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