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Lew Archer is a fictional character created by American-Canadian writer Ross Macdonald, a private detective working in Southern California. Between the late 1940s and the early '70s, the character appeared in 18 novels and a handful of shorter works as well as several film and television adaptations. Macdonald's Archer novels have been praised for introducing more literary themes and psychological depth to the hardboiled fiction genre. Critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist", while author Eudora Welty was a fan of the series and carried on a lengthy correspondence with Macdonald.Louis Bayard (2015) Review: Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald, Conjoined by a Torrent of Words, The New York Times 13 July 2015. Retrieved 14 April 2016 The editors of Thrilling Detective wrote: "The greatest P.I. series ever written? Probably."
Another difference was that Marlowe prowled the city of Los Angeles during the 1940s, while Archer followed the populace outward and primarily worked the suburbs in the 1950s. Like Marlowe, Archer observes changing American society. In 1962's The Zebra-Striped Hearse, Archer hunts a missing girl who may be dead, possibly murdered. His path repeatedly crosses a group of young surfers who own a hearse painted whimsically in zebra stripes. To the youngsters, death is remote and funny. To the world-weary detective, it's close and grim.
Lew Archer is largely a cipher, rarely described. His background is most thoroughly explored in The Moving Target: he got his training with the Long Beach, California, Police Department, but left (Archer himself says he was "fired") after witnessing too much corruption. Subsequent novels mentioned details of Archer's life only in passing. In Black Money (1966) Archer mentions that he's about 50 years old, thus born circa 1916. In The Doomsters a sheriff mocks his 6'2" and blue eyes. As old failures plague him, we learn he once "took the strap away from my old man", that he was a troubled kid and petty thief redeemed by an old cop, that he sometimes drank too much, that his ex-wife's name is Sue, and he thinks of her often. During World War II, he served in military intelligence in the United States Army, again mentioned in The Doomsters.
Archer is sometimes depressed, often world-weary. An almost Greek sense of tragedy pervades the novels as the sins of omission and crimes of sometimes-wealthy parents are frequently visited upon their children, young adults whom Archer tries desperately to save from disaster. This use of Greek drama was deliberate, as in The Galton Case (1959) being based on a loose interpretation of the Oedipus myth.Macdonald, Ross (1973). On Crime Fiction. Santa Barbara : Capra Press, Series title: Yes! Capra chapbook series ; no. 11 Tom Nolan in his Ross Macdonald, A Biography,Tom Nolan, Ross Macdonald, A Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999 wrote of the author, "Gradually he swapped the hard-boiled trappings for more subjective themes: personal identity, the family secret, the family scapegoat, the childhood trauma; how men and women need and battle each other, how the buried past rises like a skeleton to confront the present. He brought the tragic drama of Sophocles and the psychology of Sophocles to detective stories, and his prose flashed with poetic imagery." Philosophical references underlined the thoughtful tone of the novels, with The Chill (1964) having mentions of Parmenides, Heraclitus and Achilles and the tortoise, while Black Money (1966) briefly discusses Henri Bergson.
Two recurring characters of note are Arnie and Phyllis Walters, who appear in several of the novels and seem to enjoy a warm friendship with Archer. Arnie is a private detective in Reno, Nevada, about 470 miles north of Los Angeles, where Archer's investigations sometimes lead, due to Nevada then both having some of the most liberal marriage and divorce laws in the nation and being one of the only states with legalized casino gambling (and its associated organized crime presence).
Archer's name pays a double homage: first to Dashiell Hammett ("Miles Archer" was Sam Spade's murdered partner in The Maltese Falcon), Tom Nolan, editor, Ross Macdonald: The Archer Files, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, Introduction: "Archer in Memory" p. xiii.
Over his career, Macdonald was presented with several awards, primarily for his Lew Archer series. In 1964, the Mystery Writers of America awarded the author the Silver Dagger award for The Chill. Ten years later, he received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and in 1982 he received "The Eye", the Lifetime Achievement Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. In 1982, he was awarded the Robert Kirsch Award (the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) by the Los Angeles Times for "an outstanding body of work by an author from the West or featuring the West." Mystery Writer Ross Macdonald, 67, Dies July 13, 1983
Random House Films made a deal in October 2011 to create a movie franchise of Ross Macdonald's detective Lew Archer with Joel Silver and Warner Bros. Rights holder Stephen White and Random House Studio president Peter Gethers would be executive producers on the movies. This movie series would start adapting with the eighth book in the series, The Galton Case. From Silver Pictures, Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman will be executive producers with Joel Silver producing.
TV series
Archer, a 1975 NBC TV series (NBC) starring Brian Keith based on the character. It was cancelled after six episodes:
Radio
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