The Doomsters is a 1958 mystery novel by American writer Ross Macdonald, the seventh book in his Lew Archer series.

Archer is hired by escaped mental patient Carl Hallman to investigate the deaths of his wealthy and influential parents.

Carl claims to have been sent to a mental hospital by his older brother to prevent him from exposing the family's dark secrets, and escaped to contact Archer.

Many sources agree [citation needed] that this book marked a turning point in the series, wherein Macdonald abandoned his imitations of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and found his own voice.

[2] Writing in The New York Times, critic Anthony Boucher called the book a study of the "complex strands that shape responsibility and doom," and "an analysis at once compassionate and cruel, giving dimension and meaning to an unusually well paced and characterized puzzle of murder.