Santa Barbara is the city that Macdonald immortalized as Santa Teresa in his novels and the location from which he took much of his inspiration. With all this activity, it’s increasingly clear that 2015 is not only the centennial of Macdonald’s birth but also the year of the rebirth of Macdonald as a serious figure in American literature and a major figure in Santa Barbara history. Black Money, which is set in a town remarkably similar to Montecito, is Macdonald’s take on The Great Gatsby, and the combination of the Coens’ wry sensibility and Macdonald’s hard-boiled yet literate prose could well prove irresistible.

Variety reports that Joel and Ethan Coen have signed on with Hollywood mega-producer Joel Silver to adapt Macdonald’s 1966 novel Black Money for the big screen. PEN PALS: Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald became avid correspondents after Welty gave Macdonald a positive review.Īlthough the Ross Macdonald centennial bonanza will stretch into 2016 with the publication of the next two Library of America volumes and It’s All One Case by Kevin Avery, a collection of previously unpublished transcripts of interviews between Macdonald and Rolling Stone rock music writer Paul Nelson, the most exciting development for many fans may be cinematic. The Archer Files, a collection of Macdonald’s Lew Archer short stories, is also back in print, with new material collected by Macdonald’s biographer, Tom Nolan. Also this fall, Arcade Publishing has released the previously unpublished decade-long romantic correspondence between Macdonald and the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Eudora Welty under the title Meanwhile There Are Letters.

Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Philip Roth, and John Cheever. The decidedly highbrow and prestigious Library of America is leading the way, having recently published the first of a projected three hardcover volumes anthologizing Macdonald’s Lew Archer books, thus setting his work alongside not only the usual suspects, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but also on the shelf with such literary heavyweights as F. This longtime Santa Barbara resident, known to his friends and family by his birth name, Kenneth Millar, is the subject of an unprecedented posthumous revival that looks set to position him as the most significant figure in the highly influential genre of hard-boiled detective fiction. On the eve of what would have been his 100th birthday, the great detective novelist Ross Macdonald is poised to enter into his greatest period of renown since the 1970s, when his books were international best-sellers and he was on the cover of Newsweek magazine. PUBLISHED IMAGE: This portrait of Kenneth Millar (a k a Ross Macdonald) was taken by his publisher, Alfred A.

Boiled Over by Barbara Ross