Ross Macdonald is the best of ‘the great three’ crime writers

Legendary American crime fiction writer Ross Macdonald. Picture taken in 1965 in the offices of his publishers, Knopf. Photo: Alfred A. Knopf

Ross Macdonald was the pen name of Kenneth Millar (1915-1983). The man who would become one of America’s greatest mystery writers was the son of a Canadian couple, but Millar and his mother were abandoned by his father, cut loose to make their own way. Millar lived in poverty and moved dozens of times (50 by the time he was 16, by his own estimate), bunking with willing Canadian relations.

He was headed toward serious hooliganism until he found salvation through education, reading and writing.