Rare Books
The way some people die
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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.
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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].
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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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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 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.
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The underground man
Rare Books
"'The underground man' brings Macdonald's cool, pragmatic detective, Lew Archer, to a tragic fire that ravages a hillside community in Southern California. It enmeshes him in the lives of a group of troubled people searching for happy endings but fatally entangled in a web of murder and extortion stretching back through fifteen years--an angry father whose whole life has been a kind of breakdown, a mother using her son as a scapegoat, a part of alienated adolescents who believe they are rescuing a child from the adult world, and a sad woman living with a dreadful secret. The result is a novel that mingles unfaltering suspense with that extraordinary perception of an American life-style (West Coast Affluent) that is the hallmark of Ross Macdonald"--Page [1].
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