Blue City | Collections | The Huntington

Blue City | Collections | The Huntington

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The blue hammer : a Lew Archer novel
Rare Books
"The theft of a valuable painting. The long-ago disappearance of a famous artist. A murder as deceptive as magicians' illusion. A horrendous--but not buried--explosion of family hatred. These are the nerve centres of Ross Macdonald's new Lew Archer novel, the richest we have had from the author of 'the best detective novels ever written by an American' (New York Times)--a fusion of unfaltering suspense with dramatic revelation of the way lives are shaped and misshaped in the flow of time, in the hidden and dangerous emotional currents beneath the surface of family history. The time is now; the place, Southern California. The stolen canvas that Archer has been hired to retrieve is reputed to be the work of the celebrated Richard Chantry, who vanished in 1950 from his home in Santa Teresa. It is the portrait of an unknown woman--and on its trail Archer moves with edgy competence among the intrigues of dealers and collectors. Until suddenly he is drawn into a web of family complications and masked brutalities stretching back fifty years through a world where money talks or buys silence, where social prominence is a murderous weapon, where behind the plausible façades of homes not quite broken but badly bent, a heritage of lies and evasions pushes troubled men and woman deeper into trouble. And as he pursues the Chantry portrait--and the larger mystery of Richard Chantry--Archer himself is shaken as never before: Archer himself is shaken as never before: Archer, the solitary traveller, the loner who has through the years deliberately addressed himself to the deciphering of other people's lives, is thrust into an inescapable encounter with a woman who will complicate his own..."--Page [1].
636046
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The three roads
Rare Books
"This is the story of a man whose sanity and chance for happiness depend on his ability to recapture his unremembered past. The Doctors know that the reason for Brett Taylors's mental suffering is guilt, but they point out that although guilt is normally thought of as the result of sin, it may really be its cause; their theory being that the sense of some guilt may have worked on Brett until he was driven to crime. Following the belief that nothing in a person's life is ever really forgotten--in a sense that with the right encouragement any memory can be recalled--Brett is determined to trace his life back to the point where his memory failed, and to find the reason for it. Paula, who knows what happened, believes that his mental health is not strong enough to stand the strain of knowing what was done. She knows, and is being blackmailed because she knows, that the cause of all his suffering is the mental shrinking of a brutal unsolved murder, and she is very much afraid"--Dust jacket.
636027
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Experience with evil
Rare Books
"John Ross Macdonald has four thrillers to his credit, and the word is used advisedly. Between his first, "The moving target," and his fourth, "The ivory grin," he has been called a new Dashiell Hammett, a new Raymond Chandler--take your choice. His latest story shows that he is no one's shadow; a new detective, a new style prove his vigorous individuality. The 'evil' looked like a simple, if unpleasant, case of kidnapping. But the kidnapping was only the outward manifestation of evil, like the eruption of a boil on a fair skin. And Howard Cross, who was morally responsible for the man who drove the boy away, spent the most crowded twenty-four hours of his life digging deeper and deeper to get at the root of the trouble, to justify his faith in the man. The true cause of it all lay buried in the past, overshadowed by the corruption it spawned, like a microscopic germ poisoning the whole body. Howard's hectic search for it seemed to lead to the one course he did not want to travel but he followed it through to a solution which, though completely logical, will surprise the experienced thriller reader"--Dust jacket.
636031
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Sleeping beauty
Rare Books
"His new Lew Archer novel ... plunges Archer into a fascinating to intricate case connected to a disastrous oil spill on the coast of Southern California. It involves him with three generations of the imposing Lennox family whose offshore oil platform has caused the spill; whose young heiress, glimpsed for a haunting moment on the beach--handsome, angry-eyed, clutching an oil-drenched sea bird in her arms--has disappeared. On her trail, Archer finds himself journeying into a horrendous past, into the hidden lives of a family twisted by money, by power, by a ruthless, almost compulsive instinct for infidelity--infidelity between husbands and wives, parents and children, infidelity to friends, dependents, duty and, in a sense, to the earth itself. As Archer moves among these people, among their lies and contradictions; as episodes distant in time are linked--a derelict stranger found dead, a ship destroyed by fire in World War II, a secret case of extortion, a child's long-ago glimpse of violence; as the novel moves to its climactic and complex resolution, the reader is once more held fast by the unique art of Ross Macdonald: crackling suspense rooted in strong perception of reality"--Page [1].
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The Galton case
Rare Books
"Why, after twenty years, should the dying Mrs. Galton so suddenly begin trying to find her long-lost (and well lost) son? Why--on the same day--should a hit-and-run killer stab Peter Culligan, the odd servant of the old lady's lawyer? These were the questions which Lew Archer, private investigator, asked himself: dangerous questions, which led him to the discovery of a headless skeleton, and a young man who claimed the Galton fortune. They sent Archer flying from one end of the American continent to the other, and back through a generation in time to the lawless twenties and the notorious Lempi gang. Still the questions leapt at him: is the boy's claim genuine, or is he just a brilliant actor playing for high stakes? What happened to the fabulous Galton rubies which disappeared with the runaway son? What did the dead houseman know about these things? Digging for the answers with his characteristic wariness of the obvious, Lew Archer's pertinacity led his investigations to an intriguing and brilliantly worked-out climax"--Half-title page.
636035
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Eve's Hollywood
Rare Books
Eve's Hollywood is the adventures of a young woman growing up in the physical reality of a city whose high school's mascot is The Sheik, a place which the rest of the world regards as a state of mind but which does not in fact exist: the City of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels.
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