Ross MacDonald, The Underground Man

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***This article discusses both 

The Underground Man

 and 

Sleeping Beauty

as detective novels with environmental concerns.***

By 1971 Ross Macdonald was at the pinnacle of his career as a detective novelist. He’d won most of the awards that celebrate crime fiction, had been elected president of the Mystery Writers of America (1965), and had won the Silver Dagger Award in 1964 and the Gold Dagger Award in 1965. In 1971, he achieved any writer’s dream – a lengthy stint on the New York Times Best Seller List for The Underground Man, a pre-publication sell-out, and a Newsweek cover (22 March 1971) with a glowing review by the legendary Eudora Welty. While his writing life was exceeding his expectations, his, and his wife’s (fellow crime novelist Margaret Millar), focus expanded to

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Citation: Dougherty, David C.. "The Underground Man". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 May 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8015, accessed 28 March 2024.]

8015 The Underground Man 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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