Ross Macdonald

Private investigator Lew Archer decides to take the case of Irene and Larry Chalmers, a wealthy couple who believe their son is responsible for their home burglary; and begins to uncover family secrets involving murder, larceny, infidelity, and other crimes.

As a mysterious fire rages through the hills above a privileged town in Southern California, Archer tracks a missing child who may be the pawn in a marital struggle or the victim of a bizarre kidnapping. What he uncovers amid the ashes is murder--and a trail of motives as combustible as gasoline.

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...

When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on his client's girlfriend, he finds a connection to a seven-year-old suicide and a pile of gambling debts.

Robert Graves, classicist, poet, and unorthodox critic, retells the Greek legends of gods and heroes for a modern audience 

And, in the two volumes of The Greek Myths, he demonstrates with a dazzling display of relevant knowledge that Greek Mythology is “no more mysterious in content than are modern election cartoons.” His work covers, in nearly two hundred sections, the creation myths; the legends of the births...

The beautiful, high-diving blonde had Hollywood dreams and stars in her eyes but now she seems to have disappeared without a trace. Hired by her hotheaded husband and her rummy “uncle,” Lew Archer sniffs around Malibu and finds the stink of blackmail, blood-money, and murder on every pricey silk shirt. Beset by dirty cops, a bumptious boxer turned silver screen pretty boy and a Hollywood mogul with a dark past, Archer discovers the secret of a...

The first book in Ross Macdonald's acclaimed Lew Archer series introduces the detective who redefined the role of the American private eye and gave the crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity only hinted at before. Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There's the sun-worshipping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain; the fading actress with sidelines in astrology and S&M. Now...

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.