Tom Nolan is the editor of The Library of America’s new title Ross Macdonald: Four Novels of the 1950s. Here, in the first of three exclusive Reader’s Almanac posts about Macdonald’s life and work, he explores the relationships among the “Holy Trinity” of the hardboiled detective novel—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Macdonald—and the complicated dynamics of literary succession.
The Moving Target by [John] Ross Macdonald (Knopf, 1949).