When it comes to judging Ross Macdonald's impact on modern detective and crime fiction, who better to ask than the people responsible for writing it? That's just what we did.

The dozens of comments we received were overwhelmingly laudatory. Only a few authors suggested that Macdonald's influence might be waning as his books grow older and the genre expands in new directions. Even fewer (yeah, you know who you are!) admitted -- sheepishly -- that they hadn't read from Macdonald's oeuvre. Several respondents had known or at least encountered the late creator of Lew Archer; many of the rest, though, said they felt they knew him secondhand, through his merciful alter ego, Archer. But let these folks speak for themselves: