Person Biography:
Kenneth Millar, better known by his pen name Ross MacDonald, was a renowned American crime novelist and creator of the iconic private eye Lew Archer. Born in Los Gatos, California, to Canadian parents, Millar's early life was marked by poverty, rootlessness, and a search for family. After his father abandoned the family when he was just three years old, Millar was shuffled around from relative to relative, eventually attending schools in Ontario and graduating from the University of Western Ontario in 1938.
MacDonald's early writing career was marked by short, light pieces for school newspapers, but it was during his stint in the US Naval Reserve during World War II that he turned to more serious work. He began publishing under his own name, but in 1949, he adopted the pen name John MacDonald, only to later change it to Ross MacDonald to avoid confusion with his wife, Margaret Millar, also a crime fiction author.
The first appearance of Lew Archer was in "The Moving Target" in 1949, a moderate success that was followed by "The Drowning Pool" in 1950 and 19 more novels, including "The Barbarous Coast", "The Galton Case", "The Wycherly Woman", "The Goodbye Look", "The Underground Man", "Sleeping Beauty", and his last, "The Blue Hammer". Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, MacDonald's critical reputation grew, with a Newsweek cover story in 1971 and praise from Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding, who called his works "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American author".
MacDonald's novels were adapted into films, including "Harper" (1966) and "The Drowning Pool" (1975),both starring Paul Newman. He passed away at his home in Santa Barbara, California, after a three-year battle with Alzheimer's Disease.
