The Chill

"Ross Macdonald’s PI was Lew Archer. What Ross Macdonald did in these books was dig into suburban America. You have all these suburban families that look normal, but when you dig down you uncover sin and secrets that people want to keep covered up. The Chill is probably his most chilling book. It’s just a book that I really enjoyed. The plot involves Archer being hired by a young man to find his missing wife who disappeared during their honeymoon, and that cascades into a series of murders, the first of which dates back twenty years. I think you could change the perspective and follow the person trying to keep his or her secrets buried. At one point I was considering contacting the Ross Macdonald estate to get permission to flip this around and write a noir version of The Chill from the point of view of the killer. Lew Archer is more of an observer. He’s more of Chandler’s Marlowe, when it comes to morality."