On the left is the cover art for The Name is Archer by the incredibly facile illustrator, Mitch Hooks, whose work has graced hundreds of vintage paperbacks. This was Ross Macdonald's only book to be issued as a paperback original and contained 7 short stories. All of his novels were initially issued in hardcover. In the detail on the right, from my first cover idea, Lew Archer is shown reading the 1955 Bantam paperback. As much as I adore the Hooks cover, I always got the sense the artwork was a bit generic and might've been something that was sitting in the flat files at the Bantam offices. Seeing Archer with a six shooter always made me think this was for a Western.