RARA-AVIS: New Ross Macdonald shorts

From: Douglas Greene ( dgreene@odu.edu)
Date: 25 Mar 2000


 One story, the Joe Rogers, is from the very beginning of Macdonald's career, but it's qutie good.

The other 2--novelettes both featuring Lew Archer--are from the middle years. In each case, Macdonald decided to use an element in the story in a full-length novel, and therefore he never had the novelettes publihed. I hasten to add that these are not shorter versions of the novels; the plots are different and so is the development, but (as I said) a key element reappeared in a longer work.

Thanks for asking me to say something about Crippen & Landru--our website, www.crippenlandru, says most of it. The company is run by my wife Sandi and me, and we publish only single author mystery/crime/detective collections. Of interest to private eye fans on this list are our books by Marcia Muller (THE McCONE FILES and McCONE AND FRIENDS), Bill Pronzini (SPADEWORK and CARPENTER AND QUINCANNON), Jerry Healy (THE CONCISE CUDDY), and probably some others. Very noir are Peter Robinson's NOT SAFE AFTER DARK and Ed Gorman's FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT. Forthcoming are books by Clark Howard (CHALLENGE THE WIDOW-MAKER--also noir), Joe Gores (STAKEOUT ON PAGE STREET AND OTHER DKA FILES), Michael Collins (FORTUNE'S WORLD), Max Allan Collins (KISSES OF DEATH AND OTHER NATE HELLER STORIES), and the great Hugh B. Cave (LONG LIVE THE DEAD AND OTHER STORIES FROM BLACK MASK). Hugh will be 90 this year, and 2 publishers are issuing collections to celebrate the occasion--Crippen & Landru and Fedogan
& Bremer--the latter with BOTTLED IN BLONDE.

I visited with Hugh in Florida a couple weeks ago. He's amazing--and still writing. He has a new fantasy due this summer from Leisure/Kensington. It was a marvelous experience chatting with a man who wrote for BLACK MASK, WEIRD TALES, DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, DIME DETECTIVE, and many other pulps.

Doug Greene

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