The Drowning Pool is a 1975 American mystery thriller film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, and based upon Ross Macdonald's novel of the same name.

Lew Harper, a private investigator from Los Angeles, flies to Louisiana to do a job for his former lover, Iris Devereaux, who believes her family's ex-chauffeur, Pat Reavis, is blackmailing her with the knowledge that she cheated on her husband.

While searching for Reavis, Harper is abducted again, this time by hoods working for Kilbourne's wife, Mavis; she demands the whereabouts of an account book documenting her husband's illicit dealings.

The next day, Harper is informed by Broussard that, mysteriously, there was no report made to the police of any gunfight, but that Franks has been injured in a "hunting accident."

Harper visits Gretchen, giving her what's left of Reavis' money and telling her to send the account book to "the biggest newspaper in New Orleans."

In April 1973, producers David Foster and Lawrence Turman announced they had optioned the rights to the novel The Drowning Pool for director Robert Mulligan and had hired Walter Hill to adapt it.

Certainly, the studio and the producers ended up feeling that way; their main criticism was MacDonald's fans don't respond to physical action.

This meant the film was co-produced by First Artists at Warner Bros. By July 1974, Joanne Woodward had agreed to co-star and Lorenzo Semple had rewritten the script.

[6] Producer Foster says it was Woodward's suggestion to relocate the story from California to Louisiana, as she felt it would offer a point of difference.

At the time the film was being made, Paramount was producing a TV series based on the Lew Archer novels starring Brian Keith.

A.H. Weiler of The New York Times said in the review: "Under Stuart Rosenberg's muscular but pedestrian direction, the script, adapted from (Ross Macdonald's) 1950 novel, transports our hero from his native California to present-day New Orleans and its bayou environs.

... Of course, Mr. Newman's Harper survives beatings, traps, and a variety of enticing offers with quips, charm, and inherent decency projected in underplayed, workman-like style.

If his performance is not outstanding, it is a shade more convincing than the characterizations of the other principals, who emerge as odd types and not as fully fleshed, persuasive individuals.

Unfortunately, the performances and such authentic facets as Cajun talk, bayous, New Orleans and an imposing, white-pillared, antebellum mansion set amid wide lawns and ancient live oaks, serve only to make The Drowning Pool a mildly interesting diversion.