Ross Macdonald's sleuth Lew Archer prowled California from 1949 to 1976.

There are certain books that bide their time, like plants, waiting decades to flower. If you’re lucky enough to have an Agave americana on your land, wary enough to stay clear of its sharp-toothed leaves, and patient enough to hang around for anything from eight to thirty years, you will be rewarded, at last, with the sight of its butter-yellow blossoms. Likewise, if a copy of “The Underground Man,” a novel from 1971, by Ross Macdonald, has been sitting on your shelf for ages, unread and barely noticed, try opening it now. Suddenly, it’s a book in full bloom.

The cause of that flowering is not hard to find. You hear a hint of it in the opening sentences: “A rattle of leaves woke me some time before dawn. A hot wind was breathing in at the bedroom window.” At once, we are on our guard; since when did the weather become an intruder, stalking us while we sleep? Further down the page, a few hours later, we get a wider prospect:

It was a bright September morning. The edges of the sky had a yellowish tinge like cheap paper darkening in the sunlight. There was no wind at all now, but I could smell the inland desert and feel its heat.