Ross Macdonald was one of America’s greatest writers of crime fiction, giving us a series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and starring the now-iconic private detective Lew Archer. But Macdonald never really existed: He was the creation of a brilliant liteary critic named Ken Millar, who used the pseudonym to explore post-war America and the demons that plagued it. In this episode of Call Me Ishmael, the novelist and screenwriter Roger Simon, who knew Millar, talks about American noir, why we love our hardened detectives so much, and Macondald’s great masterpiece, The Chill.