Lew Archer is a private investigator, created by Ross Macdonald. Private, so that we don't ever know too much about him (a divorce; a career in the police ended when he refused to condone corruption; a liking for the works of the Japanese artist Kuniyoshi). An investigator, in that what makes him tick is finding out why, going deep - almost always into a wealthy California family where a father has alienated children. He has opted for the shadows, not the sunlight. He is an underground man. He might almost be a writer. And like a mole he throws up to the surface every now and again what lies underneath our complexities and complacencies. |