The Underground Man

One of the crime authors that Donna Leon wrote about in her book, Backstage, was Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) so I decided to borrow one of his books from the library. He was best known for Lew Archer series of books set in California. The Underground Man was published in 1971 and is number sixteen in the series of eighteen books.

Lew Archer is a private detective. One morning he meets a six year old boy, Ronny, who is staying next door and together they feed the birds in the garden. When the boy's father arrives and takes him away in the car, Archer agrees to travel with the boy's mother to make sure that her son is OK. So begins a  story of murder, complicated family relationships with children brought up in unstable families plus danger from a nearby forest fire.

This is an old style, fast moving crime novel set in a time frame where life, for the most part, was lived differently from today.