Experience with evil | Collections | The Huntington

Experience with evil | Collections | The Huntington

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The moving target
Rare Books
"The Sampson family made their money in the Texas oil fields and spent it on the California coast. There was still plenty of it left when Ralph Sampson disappeared. Which is why Arless was called in by Mrs. Sampson, a paralysed blonde who had bad dreams, and by Albert Graves who held Sampson's power of attorney. The trail that Arless followed took him down through the seven circles of California society. For Sampson had mixed with thieves and murderers, a cult of "sun-worshippers", a silent-movie star in the last stages of degradation and a boogie pianist who had served her time. In company like that, kidnapping could be the least of anyone's troubles, and so Arless believed until he actually found Sampson and realised who was guilty. But this was not before he had seen some plain and fancy evil, solved a series of violent crimes, and handed out some rough poetic justice"--Dust jacket.
636028
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Blue City
Rare Books
"In 1946, after many years' absence, John Weather returns to Blue City to find his father--the one-time Mayor--had been murdered on the street two years before. For political reasons among the conflicting forces which now rule the place, the murder has been hushed up and the murderer never found. The City as Weather finds it on his return, is one of evil and corruption, and corruption, as he also discovers, is something which once injected into a political organism is bound to spread. And this is what has happened in Blue City which is rotting from the top. It is an ugly City now, too ugly even for the men and women who have made it that way, and its corruption revolts John Weather into action on its own terms. Kenneth Millar writes with uncompromising toughness and spares us no reality. His world is one of brutal values; his people without pity or remorse. But this is not toughness for the sake of toughness. It is a harsh and vivid picture of a brutal side of life, focused before us with pitiless clarity like a sudden light in a shameful room. And in the nakedness of its tearing reality and in a manner which is not easily forgotten, we are faced with the fearful implications of these people's lives, and a lingering disturbance for some sort of truth which they contain"--Dust jacket.
636026
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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 goodbye look
Rare Books
"In this new novel, Macdonald's famous non-hero private eye Lew Archer ... picks his way through the overheated and explosive mazes of a wealthy family's long hidden secrets. A lost heirloom, a murder that breeds more murder, a boy's life poisoned by a money-crime committed before he was born--these are the elements of "The goodbye look." It is Ross Macdonald at his unnerving best: a novel at once brilliantly perceptive of the world it anatomises--the freeway culture of Southern California--and from first to last unfaltering in its dramatic excitement and suspense"--Page [1].
636043
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Find a victim
Rare Books
"'He was the ghastliest hitch-hiker who ever thumbed me,' says Archer, recalling how it all started. And by the time the man was stowed into Archer's car so much blood had been pumped out of the round hole in his chest that the body was almost lifeless. By the time he reached hospital there was no life at all. But on the way, Archer had stopped for help at Kerrigan's motel, and his reception there didn't come up to what a good Samaritan might except. Archer, who had no business in this little desert town and didn't know a single soul living--or dying--in it, had to postpone his journey to Sacramento to give evidence at the inquest. And being Archer, he didn't spend the time sitting in a hotel bedroom; though he would have been a lot more comfortable if he had, because there was precious little time for sleep once he started finding out why that body had a hole in it"--Dust jacket.
636032
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The ivory grin
Rare Books
"'The ivory grin' features private detective Lew Archer again and even Lew finds the job pretty tough, especially since his original assignment petered out early on when the girl he was hired to trail had her throat cut. Lew, however, needed money and he soon discovered enough of the ramifications to make sure of an adequate return if he solved the problem--which, by then, had become a puzzle he couldn't resist anyway. But Death grinned in more ways than one before he got to the root of it all"--Half-title verso.
636030