warm friendship with Archer. Arnie is a private detective in Reno, Nevada, about 470 miles north of Los Angeles. Archer sometimes calls upon Arnie for assistance with cases that lead to Nevada. Archer's investigations sometimes lead from California to Nevada, due in part to Nevada then having some of the most liberal marriage and divorce laws in the nation, and also due to Nevada then being one of the only states with legalized casino gambling and the associated organized crime presence. Archer's name pays a double homage: first to Dashiell Hammett ("Miles Archer" was the name of Sam Spade's murdered partner in The Maltese Falcon ), while Lew Wallace was the author of the novel Ben Hur (1880). Recognition According to a New York Times article, "some critics ranked him [Macdonald] among the best American novelists of his generation". William Goldman of the newspaper's Book Review section wrote that the Archer books were "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American". 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." Books Novels The Moving Target (1949) The Drowning Pool (1950) The Way Some People Die (1951) The Ivory Grin (1952; aka Marked for Murder) Find a Victim (1954) The Barbarous Coast (1956) The Doomsters (1958) The Galton Case (1959) The Wycherly Woman (1961) The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962) The Chill (1964) The Far Side of the Dollar (1965) Black Money (1966) The Instant Enemy (1968) The Goodbye Look (1969) The Underground Man (1971) Sleeping Beauty (1973) The Blue Hammer (1976) Short stories "Find the Woman" (June 1946, EQMM) "The Bearded Lady" (American Magazine, October 1948) "The Imaginary Blonde" (February 1953, Manhunt; AKA Gone Girl) "The Guilty Ones" (May 1953, Manhunt; AKA The Sinister Habit) "The Beat-Up Sister" (October 1953, Manhunt; AKA The Suicide) "Guilt-Edged Blonde" (January 1954, Manhunt) "Wild Goose Chase" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,