Ross Macdonald is the pseudonym
of the American
-Canadian writer
of crime fiction
Kenneth Millar (December 13, 1915 – July 11, 1983). He is best known for his series of hardboiled
novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer
.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California
, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario
, Canada
, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year.
The delicate sensitivity of a frightened rattlesnake.
They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through mountains, cut down a thousand year of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn't touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn't be tainted.
"You have a secret passion for justice. Why don't you admit it?""I have a secret passion for mercy. But justice is what keeps happening to people."
Money costs too much.
I knew how it was with drunks. They ran out of generosity, even for themselves.
Every witness has his own way of creeping up on the truth.