Rare Books
The blue hammer : a Lew Archer novel
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Black money
Rare Books
"In what is perhaps his strangest case Lew Archer, the celebrated private-eye, explores the secret life of a rich Californian residential suburb. A beautiful young woman has jilted her fiancé and taken up with a mysterious character who represents himself as a French political refugee. Hired to investigate this man, Archer becomes involved in several murders and a gigantic swindle. Running through the book, as a central theme, is the corrupting influence of the underworld and its money on modern society. "Black money" is the most individual of the brilliant series of novels that have won Ross Macdonald international recognition"--Half-title verso.
636040
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The way some people die
Rare Books
"This is the story of Galley, a young woman who was not as nice as her mother thought her and of Archer who, delegated to find her, finds also a viper's nest. Galley has a soft body and a hard heart, but neither prevents Archer from sorting out the mess into which a love of men and money has dragged her not unwilling feet"--Half-title verso.
636029
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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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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 doomsters
Rare Books
"When Archer opened the door to the tall young man who was afraid of the light, he was letting the Doomsters in. Who were the Doomsters? Carl certainly knew them--that was why Archer found him on the doorstep in a bad state of exhaustion and desperately in need of help. Zinnie knew them, though you wouldn't expect her to be haunted by memories--or conscience; Zinnie was pseudo-Hollywood, expensive and not very new, but a nice machine for all that. Mildred certainly knew them and that was more understandable, with her grave innocence and the loneliness that made her seem vulnerable. And Dr. Grantland had his fill of them--he was a good doctor suffering from a bad case of lack of integrity. There was the red-headed woman, too, who drank time under the table; she knew them. But Archer didn't, until he got talked into helping Carl, and found himself a lap behind the next murder"--Dust jacket.
636034
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The Wycherly woman
Rare Books
"She was last seen alive at the San Francisco docks, three months before Lew Archer was hired to search for her. The search lead him first to her family and her college friends, then far afield from the respectable and moneyed world where Phoebe had been brought up, into the criminal lower depths where life is valued lightly. Ross Macdonald's new book has the texture of a good novel; the characters, ranging from an oil millionaire to an unemployed actress writing her "true-confession" autobiography, are freshly seen; and, as always, with Ross Macdonald, the narrative is fast-paced, leading up to an explosive climax"--Half-title verso.
636037