Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer series is the pinnacle of the private eye novel.  In many ways, it is the greatest series of American novels, period.

In The Galton Case, Archer is hired to look for  Anthony Galton, who disappeared twenty years earlier.  Now Galton's dying mother wants to be reconciled with him & bequeath him her considerable fortune.  Archer's suspicions are raised when all the pieces of the mystery fall into place a little to quickly.

With a lone wolf investigator, wanton women, mobsters, millions, beatings & shootings, The Galton Case has all the elements of a classic noir mystery.

(Reviewed:01-Nov-97)

Grade: (A) Orrin C. Judd

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Ross MacDonald Links:

    -Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) - Pseudonym for Kenneth Millar (Kirjasto)
    -ESSAY: The Writer As Detective Hero,/a> (Ross Macdonald, January 1965, Show)
    -ESSAY: MACDONALD VERSUS MACDONALD: A CRIME FICTION DEBATE: Evaluating the literary legacies of John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald from inside a Florida flea market. (RON CORBETT, 3/20/24, CrimeReads)
    -INTERVIEW: THE BACKLIST: JONATHAN KELLERMAN ON RETURNING TO MARGARET MILLAR AND ROSS MACDONALD: Kellerman sits down with Polly Stewart to discuss Millar's classic noir. (POLLY STEWART, 3/19/24, CrimeReads)
    -ESSAY: THE LITERARY BLOOD FEUD BETWEEN RAYMOND CHANDLER AND ROSS MACDONALD: Or, The Way Some Crime Writers Decry... (CURTIS EVANS, 10/07/22, CrimeReads)
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    -REVIEW ESSAY: The Underground Man at Age 50: How Ross Macdonald turned hard-boiled crime stories into Freudian case studies (Ted Gioia, 12/20/21, The Honest Broker)
    -ESSAY: Gatsby as noir: The genesis of Ross Macdonald’s Black Money: (Tom Nolan, Library of America)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Ross Macdonald (IMDB.com)
    -Ross MacDonald (Thrilling Detective)
    -Ross MacDonald (Stop You're Killing Me)
    -The Ross Macdonald files (Karl-Erik Lindkvist)
    -BIBLIOGRAPHY: ROSS MacDONALD/KENNETH MILLAR:
    -Ross Macdonald (Wikipedia)
    -Ross MacDonald (1915-1983) (The Literary Encyclopedia)
    -PROFILE: The last testament of Ross Macdonald (Leonard Cassuto, 11/2/2003, Boston Globe)
    -ESSAY: Firmness: Lew Archer should be the hero of our time. (Alan Jacobs, 4/15/20, Hedgehog Review)
    -PROFILE: THE CASE OF THE BROKENHEARTED FATHER: A troubled teenage girl. A dark night. A dead child. Investigating the real-life tragedy that haunted Ross Macdonald. (DAVID BOWMAN, Salon)
    -TRIBUTE: Fifty Years with Ross MacDonald (J. Kingston Pierce January Magazine)
    - EXCERPT: from Ross Macdonald: A Biography By TOM NOLAN
    -ESSAY : Stranger No More (Tom Nolan, January Magazine)
    -ESSAY: Tarnished Gold: Tracking Lew Archer Reveals Insights Into California's Soul (Tom Nolan, WestWays)
    -ESSAY: Ross Macdonald (Tom Nolan, BookSense)
    -ESSAY: Archer Takes the Case: A veteran MacDonald reader picks his favorite three Archer stories (Karl-Erik Lindkvist, January Magazine)
    -ESSAY: Learning from Lew (Gary Phillips, January Magazine)
    -ESSAY: It's Personal: the Compassionate Miossions of Ross MacDonald and Lew Archer (Kevin Smith, January Magazine)
    -INTERVIEW: The Case of the Split Man: an interview with Tom Nolan (J. Kingston Pierce January Magazine)
    -PROFILE: Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar) (William Marling, Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction)
    -PROFILE: Gumshoe in paradise - Santa Barbara, California (Peter Fish, September 1999, Sunset)
    -PROFILE: Ross Macdonald: A Brief Biography (Classic Crime Fiction)
    -ESSAY: Ross Macdonald’s Marked Copy of The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of Influence (Robert F. Moss)
    -ESSAY: Ross MacDonald, The Holy Ghost (Nuclear Typewriter)
    -ESSAY: Exit Lew Archer; Enter Lew Harper? (Ron Miller, THE MYSTERY CLASSICS: BOOK & FILM)
    -ESSAY: Maestros of Murder: Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald (Roy Meador, BookSource Monthly)
    -ESSAY: "Tecs of the Times": A History of Private Eye Fiction (Neil Albert, MysteryNet)
    -ESSAY: The mystery as novel of manners - society's reflection in mystery stories (Linda Bridges, 1/20/92, National Review)
    -BOOK SITE: The Novels of Ross Macdonald by Michael Kreyling (South Carolina University Press)
    -ART: Caricature of Ross MacDonald (David Levine, This drawing originally appeared with Tough Guys, September 30, 1976, NY Review of Books)
    -ARCHIVES: "ross macdonald" (Find Articles)
    -REVIEW: of The Ivory Grin by Ross MacDonald (jcc55883, AOL Journal)
    -REVIEW: of Find a Victim by Ross MacDonald (Howard Dratch, Blog Critics)
    -REVIEW: of The Galton Case by Ross Macdonald (William Marling, Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction)
    -REVIEW: of The Underground Man by Ross Macdonald (William Marling, Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction)
    -REVIEW: of The Underground Man (TC, Mystery Guide)
    -REVIEW: of The Underground Man (jcc55883, AOL Journal)
    -REVIEW: of The Underground Man (Richard Schickel, Commentary)
    -REVIEW: of Sleeping Beauty by Ross MacDonald (jcc55883, AOL Journal)
    -REVIEW : of Sleeping Beauty (Joe Hartlaub, Book Reporter)
    -REVIEW: of The Blue Hammer by Ross Macdonald (Thomas R. Edwards, NY Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Lew Archer: Private Investigator by Ross MacDonald (James Clar, Crime Scene Scotland)
    -REVIEW: of Strangers in Towm: Three Newly Discovered Mysteries. By Ross Macdonald (Scott Veale, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW : of Strangers in Town: Three Newly Discovered Mysteries By Ross Macdonald (J. Kingston Pierce, January)
    -REVIEW: of Strangers in Town (Michael Carlson, Shots)
    -REVIEW: of Meet Me at the Morgue by Ross MacDonald (Janet Julian, Kliatt)
    -REVIEW: of Ross MacDonald: A Biography by Tom Nolan (Terry Teachout, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Ross MacDonald by Tom Nolan (Jerry Jay Carroll, The SF Chronicle)
    -REVIEW: of Ross MacDonald: A Biography by Tom Nolan (Roger Miller, Book Page)
    -REVIEW: of The Novels of Ross Macdonald by Michael Kreyling (Tom Nolan, LA Times)
    -REVIEW: of The Novels of Ross MacDonald by Michael Kreyling (Dennis Lythgoe, Deseret Morning News)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: THIS 1970S FILM ABOUT ROSS MACDONALD IS FASCINATING AND UNEXPECTEDLY BEAUTIFUL: A 1977 documentary that aired on PBS shows the legendary author working and swimming, alive with ideas. 9DWYER MURPHY, 1/04/21, Crime Reads)

MARGARET MILLAR:
    -ESSAY: The mystery of Margaret Millar: why are her novels out of print? (Jon L. Breen, April 18, 2005, The Weekly Standard)

LEW ARCHER NOVELS:

- The Moving Target (1949)

-The Drowning Pool (1950)

-The Way Some People Die (1951)

-The Ivory Grin (1952)

-Find a Victim (1954)

-The Name Is Archer [Short Stories] (1955)

-The Barbarous Coast (1956)

-The Doomsters (1958)

-The Galton Case (1959)

-The Wycherly Woman (1961)

-The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962)

-The Chill (1964)

-The Far Side of the Dollar (1965)

-Black Money (1966)

-The Instant Enemy (1968)

-The Goodbye Look (1969)

-The Underground Man (1971)

-Sleeping Beauty (1973)

-The Blue Hammer (1976)

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