 First edition | |
| Author | Ross Macdonald |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Lew Archer |
| Genre | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Knopf |
Publication date | 1958 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| ISBN | 9-997-51958-2 |
| OCLC | 1376657 |
| Preceded by | The Barbarous Coast |
| Followed by | The Galton Case |
The Doomsters is a 1958 mystery novel by American writer Ross Macdonald, the seventh book in his Lew Archer series.
Archer is hired by escaped mental patient Carl Hallman to investigate the deaths of his wealthy and influential parents. His mother died in a drowning several years earlier, and his father, a Senator, died more recently. Carl claims to have been sent to a mental hospital by his older brother to prevent him from exposing the family's dark secrets, and escaped to contact Archer. Carl's brother dies in a shooting that is blamed on Carl, and a manhunt for Carl ensues across the family's vast orange orchards and surrounding property. The more Archer investigates, the more suspects he finds for the trio of deaths that haunt the Hallman family.
The title is taken from the poem To an Unborn Pauper Child, by Thomas Hardy:
The poem reflects on the difficulty of escaping the lot to which we are born, an underlying theme of Macdonald's book.
Many sources agree [ citation needed ] that this book marked a turning point in the series, wherein Macdonald abandoned his imitations of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and found his own voice. It also marks Lew Archer as a man more interested in understanding the criminal than in catching him. Macdonald described The Doomsters and its successor, The Galton Case (1959), as the books where after a decade as a professional novelist he felt most satisfied with his writing. [2]
Writing in The New York Times , critic Anthony Boucher called the book a study of the "complex strands that shape responsibility and doom," and "an analysis at once compassionate and cruel, giving dimension and meaning to an unusually well paced and characterized puzzle of murder." [3]
William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President's Men (1976). His other works include his thriller novel Marathon Man and his cult classic comedy/fantasy novel The Princess Bride, both of which he also adapted for the film versions.
Colin Henry Wilson was an English writer, philosopher and novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, eventually writing more than a hundred books. Wilson called his philosophy "new existentialism" or "phenomenological existentialism", and maintained his life work was "that of a philosopher, and (his) purpose to create a new and optimistic existentialism".
Lewis Barrett Welch Jr. was an American poet associated with the Beat generation literary movement.
William Anthony Parker White, known by his pen-name Anthony Boucher, was an American author, critic, and editor, who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dramas. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to "Anthony Boucher", White also employed the pseudonym "H. H. Holmes", which was the pseudonym of a late-19th-century American serial killer; Boucher would also write light verse and sign it "Herman W. Mudgett".
Ross Macdonald is the main pseudonym that was used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.
Margaret Ellis Millar was an American-Canadian mystery and suspense writer.
Lew Archer is a fictional character created by American-Canadian writer Ross Macdonald. Archer is 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 building on the foundations of hardboiled fiction by introducing more literary themes and psychological depth to the 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. The editors of Thrilling Detective wrote: "The greatest P.I. series ever written? Probably."
Yamakasi – Les samouraïs des temps modernes is a 2001 French movie featuring the Yamakasi. The 2004 film Les fils du vent is a semi-sequel playing in Bangkok.
The Moving Target is a 1949 mystery novel by American writer Ross Macdonald, who at this point used the name "John Macdonald".
The Drowning Pool is a 1950 mystery novel by American writer Ross Macdonald, his second book in the series revolving around the cases of private detective Lew Archer.
Blue City is a thriller written in 1947 by Ross Macdonald. The novel was originally released under his real name, Kenneth Millar, by Alfred A. Knopf, while a condensed version was serialized in the August and September 1950 issues of Esquire. In 1986 it was considerably adapted to film.
The Way Some People Die is a detective mystery written in 1951 by American author Ross Macdonald. It is the third book featuring his private eye Lew Archer.
The Drowning Pool is a 1975 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, and based upon Ross Macdonald's novel of the same name. The film stars Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Anthony Franciosa, and is a loose sequel to Harper. The setting is shifted from California to Louisiana.
Harper is a 1966 American Technicolor mystery film in Panavision based on Ross Macdonald's 1949 novel The Moving Target and adapted for the screen by novelist William Goldman, who admired MacDonald's writings. The film stars Paul Newman as Lew Harper. It is directed by Jack Smight, with a cast that includes Robert Wagner, Julie Harris, Janet Leigh, Shelley Winters and Arthur Hill.
The Galton Case is the eighth book in the Lew Archer Series by Ross Macdonald. The book was published in 1959. Macdonald thought with this book he found his own voice as a writer.
Black Money is a novel by US American mystery writer Ross Macdonald. Published in 1966, it is among the most powerful of all Ross Macdonald's novels and was his own personal choice as his best book.
Joy House is a 1964 French mystery–thriller film starring Jane Fonda, Alain Delon and Lola Albright. It is based on the 1954 novel of the same name by Day Keene.
"A Window for Death" is a Nero Wolfe mystery novella by Rex Stout, first published as "Nero Wolfe and the Vanishing Clue" in the May 1956 issue of The American Magazine. It first appeared in book form in the short-story collection Three for the Chair, published by the Viking Press in 1957.
The Zebra-Striped Hearse is a detective mystery written in 1962 by American author Ross Macdonald, the tenth book featuring his private eye, Lew Archer.
Find a Victim was the fifth in the series of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels. It was published as a Borzoi Book by Alfred A. Knopf in 1954 and mass marketed by Bantam Books in the following year. The first British hardback was published in Cassell & Company's Crime Connoisseur series in 1955, the same year that a French translation appeared as Vous qui entrez ici. At this period the author was writing under the name John Ross Macdonald and was also identified as Kenneth Millar on the Knopf dust jacket.
 | This article about a mystery novel of the 1950s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
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