Ross Macdonald

When an aging and filthy rich woman hires him to investigate her son's disappearance twenty years ago, Lew Archer uncovers a headless skeleton, a suspicious heir, and a con game whose stakes are high enough to kill for. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

The Galton Case

The Chill

In a rundown house in Santa Monica, Mrs. Samuel Lawrence presses fifty crumpled bills into Lew Archer's hand and asks him to find her wandering daughter, Galatea. Described as ‘crazy for men’ and without discrimination, she was last seen driving off with small-time gangster Joe Tarantine, a hophead hood with a rep for violence. Archer traces the hidden trail from San Francisco slum alleys to the luxury of Palm Springs, traveling through an urban wilderness of drugs and viciousness. As the bodies begin to pile up, he finds that even angel faces can mask the blackest of hearts.Filled with dope, delinquents and murder, this is classic Macdonald and one of his very best in the Lew Archer series.

The Way Some People Die

Private detective Lew Archer is hired by Maude Slocum to investigate a poison pen letter, but when Archer arrives, he discovers Maude's mother-in-law drowned in the family pool. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

The Drowning Pool

The Name Is Archer

In The Far Side of the Dollar, private investigator Lew Archer is looking for an unstable rich kid who has run away from an exclusive reform school—and into the arms of kidnappers. Why are his desperate parents so loath to give Archer the information he needs to find him? And why do all trails lead to a derelict Hollywood hotel where starlets and sailors once rubbed elbows with two-bit grifters—and where the present clientele includes a brand-new corpse? The result is Ross Macdonald at his most exciting, delivering 1,000-volt shocks to the nervous system while uncovering the venality and depravity at the heart of the case.

The Far Side of the Dollar

Generations of murder, greed and deception come home to roost in time for the most shocking conclusion ever in a Lew Archer novel. At first glance, it's an open-and-shut missing persons case: a headstrong daughter has run off to be with her hothead juvenile delinquent boyfriend. That is until this bush-league Bonnie & Clyde kidnap Stephen Hackett, a local millionaire industrialist. Now, Archer is offered a cool 100 Gs for his safe return by his coquettish heiress mother who has her own mysterious ties to this disturbed duo. But the deeper Archer digs, the more he realizes that nothing is as it seems and everything is questionable. Is the boyfriend a psycho ex-con with murder on the brain or a damaged youngster trying to straighten out his twisted family tree? And is the daughter simply his nympho sex-kitten companion in crime or really a fragile kid, trying to block out horrific memories of bad acid and an unspeakable sex crime?

The Instant Enemy

Lew Archer's search for a missing bride turns into a complicated case involving a twenty-year-old murder and cover-up, a wealthy woman with a powerful hold over her son, and a dead blonde. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

While a mysterious fire ravages an affluent community in Southern California, Lew Archer searches for a missing child and discovers a secret history of wayward parents, wounded offspring, and murder. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

The Underground Man

The Ivory Grin (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

The Three Roads

Black Money (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Las Cruces wasn’t a place most travelers would think to stop. But after private investigator Lew Archer plays the good samaritan and picks up a bloodied hitchhiker, he finds himself in town for a few days awaiting a murder inquest. A hijacked truck full of liquor and an evidence box full of marijuana, $20,000 from a big-time bank heist by a small-time crook, corruption, adultery, incest, prodigal daughters, and abused wives all make the little town seem a lot more interesting than any guide book ever could. And as the murder rate rises, Archer finds himself caught up in mystery where everyone is a suspect and everyone’s a victim.

A Lew Archer Novel

Find a Victim

Kenneth Millar

Lew Archer, a private detective, is hired to investigate the background of a wealthy young woman's suitor, who seems to be a fortune hunter

The Zebra-striped Hearse

"Three of the finest Macdonald thrillers are reissued in this superb collection, a companion volume to the Archer in Hollywood omnibus of 1967" --

Archer at Large

The three novels collected in this second volume in the Library of America Ross Macdonald edition represent for many readers the summit of American crime writing. They remain thrilling for their searing psychological truth-telling, daring flights of narrative invention, and their keenly observed picture of the manners and morals of a particular time and place (Southern California in the early 1960s). Each reflects Macdonald’s enduring concern with the hidden crimes and agonizing dysfunctions that haunt families from one generation to the next. In The Zebra-Striped Hearse, a father’s attempt to protect his daughter from “the complete and utter personal disaster” of marriage to a troubled drifter sends private detective Lew Archer on a perplexing and increasingly bloody trail that leads him from Mexico to Lake Tahoe and finally into the maze of a tragically splintered identity. In The Chill, the search for a young bride gone missing uncovers a succession of seemingly unrelated crimes committed over a period of decades, as Archer finds himself “a ghost from the present haunting a bloody moment in the past.” Another hunt for a missing person—this time a young man escaped from an elite reform school—provides the impetus for The Far Side of the Dollar, which Macdonald’s friend Eudora Welty considered “securely among your strongest and best . . . a beauty that just gets better.” LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

The Zebra-Striped Hearse / The Chill / The Far Side of the Dollar

Ross Macdonald: Three Novels of the Early 1960s (LOA #279)

When rich boy Peter Jamieson's fiancee suddenly breaks their engagement, Peter hires private detective Lew Archer to investigate the woman's mysterious French lover

Black Money

Midnight Blue

The Guilty Ones

Harriet Blackwell, 24, flachsblond, soll in Kürze erben, als sie sich mit einem Maler liiert. Ihrem Vater gefällt das nicht. Er setzt Detektiv Lew Archer auf ihn und seine Tochter an, nachdem das Paar geflohen ist. Archer verfolgt die beiden schon bald quer über die Landkarte - bis er merkt, dass der junge Mann ihn zum Narren gehalten hat. Aus welchem Grund aber verwendet der Gesuchte eine fremde Identität? Während Archer einem Hinweis nach dem anderen nachgeht, kreuzt immer wieder ein ehemaliger Leichenwagen seinen Weg. An Bord sind junge Leute auf der Suche nach Vergnügen. Doch das Surferparadies Malibu erweist sich trotz Sonne, Wind und Wellen schon bald als Insel der Gestrandeten. Denn hier sind nicht nur die Beach Boys und Girls auf dem Road Trip unterwegs. Auch Verbrechen aus der Vergangenheit werfen ihren Schatten. (Quelle: Klappentext).

Ross Macdonald

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