Lew Archer

When Lew Archer stops for a hitchhiker and finds a young man dying of a gunshot wound, he knows he has stumbled into a mess. In a matter of hours he is suspected by the law, hired by a target-shooting trucking magnate, and chasing a hijacked load of hooch and a band of sinners on the loose.

In The Barbarous Coast, Lew Archer's pursuit of a girl who jackknifed too suddenly from high diving to high living leads him to an ex-fighter with an unexplained movie contract, a big-time gambler who died by his own knife, and finally to an answer he would rather not have known.

Celebrated private eye Lew Archer is hired by a father intent on preventing the marriage of his daughter to a penniless and possibly murderous artist. The chase takes Archer from Mexico to Lake Tahoe and from the San Francisco Bay area to Los Angeles as more than one murder crowds the investigation.

Lew Archer knows he shouldn't have taken the case, but Alex Kincaid seemed so desperate. Kincaid's loving new bride Dolly has just inexplicably walked out on him, leaving Kincaid more than a little fearful for her sanity and her safety. So Archer reluctantly agreed to help Kincaid find his wife. But what he finds instead is enough to send a chill down anyone's spine—a new fresh corpse and evidence linking Dolly not only to this murder but to a series of others dating back to before she was even born.

The once popular Barcelona Hotel is now boarded up. Starlets and Navy boys once rubbed shoulders there with tycoons and hustlers. Lewis Archer knows that twenty years ago a handful of dreamers and losers came together in the Barcelona. The question now is what kind of deal went down there, and why were a mixed-up rich kid and a beautiful blonde the first to pay the price?

Sleeping Beauty plunges detective Lew Archer into a fascinating and intricate case connected to a disastrous oil spill on the Southern California coast. Ross Macdonald's masterful tale leads his investigator into a load of trouble involving ransom, a lethal dose of Nembutal, the death of a stranger found floating off shore, and three generations of the imposing Lennox family, whose offshore oil platform caused the spill. The young Lennox heiress—glimpsed for a haunting moment on the beach, clutching an oil-drenched sea bird in her arms—has disappeared, and while on her trail, Archer finds himself journeying into the hidden lives of a family twisted by money, power, and a compulsive instinct for infidelity.

The facts pound hard and cold in Lew Archer's mind: a woman who means something to him is missing, a man has bled to death beneath a magnolia tree, and a killer is on the loose. The facts are falling into place, but he doesn't have to like them.