Fantasy Books 24

Lew Archer is the central character in a series of hardboiled mystery novels by American-Canadian author Ross Macdonald. Archer is a private detective who works out of Southern California in the 1950’s. His characteristics initially started out very similar to that of Philip Marlowe, although he would diverge later on. The novels The Moving Target (as “Harper”) and The Drowning Pool were adapted to film, starring Paul Newman as the renamed “Lew Harper.”

The Lew Archer character made his debut in the 1949 novel The Moving Target. The final novel in the series is The Blue Hammer, which was published in 1976. Below is a list of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels in order of when they were originally published (which is the same as their chronological order):

Publication Order of Lew Archer Books