I just had to add MacDonald to this list, since I think his Lew Archer novels are the greatest modern detective series ever. Although he tended to use the same plot elements over and over and over again (meaning that his novels are better read individually than collectively) and his plots can be so intricate you need a scorecard to keep track of all the various characters and their relationships to one another. His masterpiece is The Far Side Of The Dollar, maybe the greatest hardboiled detective novel ever written. Other superior novels in the series include The Chill, The Doomsters and The Zebra-Striped Hearse, as well as the magnificent short story collection The Name Is Archer.

Ahhhh. OK. Thanks for clearing up my MacDonald confusion, Todd - for some reason I always get Ross and J.D. hopelessly tangled.

I do know that the Lew Archer novels have some extremely devoted fans. At the moment he's definitely on my list of new authors to try someday (I tend to go through mystery writers one series at a time, which slows up the process of discovering new ones considerably.).

IIRC the Paul Newman movie Harper is based on these books - Newman supposedly asked that the change be made from Archer because he'd had so much luck with movie titles beginning with H.

The Harper movie was based on the first Lew Archer novel, The Moving Target. It is usually highly acclaimed, but the almost-forgotten sequel The Drowning Pool, based on the second Archer novel, is a far superior and excellent film, IMHO. It was also Melanie Griffith's screen debut.