Until now I had never read a Ross Macdonald novel. My loss. For on the basis of The Blue Hammer alone—and there are 19 earlier Macdonald novels in the Lew Archer canon—this writer of cracking detective stories is as good as the more relentlessly "serious" American novelists of the declining years of our 20th century, and better than most. A snap judgment, perhaps, but that's what we're paid for.

And a shameful admission. For Ross Macdonald is as easy to read as he is hard to overlook….

It is [his] perfect blend of style and action that hooks the reader at once…. (p. G1)

[A] tantalizing possibility, hinting of further mysteries neither acted out nor directly revealed, gives Archer his dimension of flawed innocence. Macdonald once described him as "a deliberately narrowed version of the writing self, so narrow that when he turns sideways he almost disappears...