Rare Books
The underground man
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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].
636045
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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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The far side of the dollar
Rare Books
"In this new and moving novel, Lew Archer, Macdonald's celebrated California investigator, is hired by the principal of a private reform school to trace a missing boy. What appears to be an ordinary matter of juvenile delinquency is suddenly magnified, as Archer plunges into a web of murder and extortion. He ranges all over the Far West, tracking down men and women who are pursuing the fast buck, and hating to be reminded of what is waiting on the far side of the last dollar. To the hard-boiled story of violence and death, Ross Macdonald has brought substance and depth of characterisation. His novels have a social range and moral dimension that, in combination with a striking prose style and narrative drive, provide the reader with a rewarding experience"--Half-title page.
636041
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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 chill
Rare Books
"Hired to trace a runaway bride, Lew Archer uncovers a trail of murder that leads half-way across America and twenty years into the past. Beyond that, it need only be said that the story is every bit as exciting, baffling, and ultimately satisfying as would be expected from the author of "The zebra-striped hearse." In the direct line of succession that reaches from Dashiell Hammett to Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald adds, to the crackling dialogue and narrative tightness of his illustrious predecessors, impressive qualities of his own: a depth of psychological understanding, a sureness in handling a wide variety of social milieus, and a dazzling, unpredictable plot"--Half-title verso.
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