The Drowning Pool was Ross MacDonald’s second Lew Archer book. It was so early in his writing career that he hadn’t finalized his pen name. Kenneth Millar would drop the John soon enough and write as Ross. That way he dodged the “who shot JR” jokes later in life.
The book was set in Los Angeles whereas the Newman-Woodward movie started off in LA but moved to the New Orleans metro area. It’s a good movie; something of a make-up for the dismal WUSA filmed in New Orleans and released in 1970. Talk about a bad time at the movies.
Speaking of the movie:
Harper days are here again? I like it.
Finally, here’s the trailer:
In great crime fiction, and that certainly goes for Ross Macdonald, the city is a character. Crime fiction moved from its roots withers. Relocating the movie to New Orleans was a catastrophic mistake, although less so than moving The Laughing Policeman from Stockholm to San Francisco. I could barely watch that movie knowing that it belonged in Sweden, which the authors wrote about with such skill.