Find a Winner

What a response! Normally, when The Rap Sheet mounts a book-giveaway contest, the number of entries runs between 60 and 100. We’ve always considered that very respectable participation. However, our announcement last week that we were going to hand out two free sets of four standalone Ross Macdonald novels--Blue City (1947), The Three Roads (1948), Meet Me at the Morgue (1953), and The Ferguson Affair (1960)--redefined our expectations of what to expect from such a competition.

Within the very first day of accepting entries, we had received 40. And the number climbed quickly from there. By yesterday at midnight, when this contest officially ended, the count of requests for those two sets of Macdonald paperbacks had reached a whopping 157! Whether because we were giving away four novels at a shot, or because the Macdonald moniker draws so much more attention than those of other authors whose books have been our prizes before, this turned out to be our most popular contest yet.

Now comes the big announcement of our two lucky winners, chosen completely at random. They are Mike Galbreath of Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Wendy Roberts of Newport Coast, California. Congratulations to both Rap Sheet readers! We hope you’ll enjoy visiting or revisiting all four of those early Macdonald works. And of course, we trust you will continue to enjoy reading The Rap Sheet.

At the same time as we solicited entries in our latest drawing, we asked readers to vote their favorite works among Macdonald’s 18 books starring Los Angeles private eye Lew Archer. Again, the response was heavy. With 225 votes counted, here are the top five ballot winners:

1. The Chill (1964) -- 31 votes, or 14 percent
2. The Underground Man (1971) -- 20 votes, or 9 percent
3. The Galton Case (1959) -- 19 votes, 8 percent
4. The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962) -- 19 votes, 8 percent
5. The Instant Enemy (1968) -- 14 votes, 6 percent

(The full rundown of results is available here.)

Rap Sheet followers who aren’t yet familiar with Macdonald’s memorable body of work, but would like to read the best he had to offer, would do well to start with those five Archer adventures.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our latest book-giveaway contest, and who made their opinions known in our Ross Macdonald poll. You can expect another book competition to appear on this page soon.