THE DROWNING POOL

When a millionaire matriarch is found floating face-down in the family pool, the prime suspects are her good-for-nothing son and his seductive teenage daughter. In The Drowning Pool, Lew Archer takes this case in the L.A. suburbs and encounters a moral wasteland of corporate greed and family hatred--and sufficient motive for a dozen murders.

THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE

THE IVORY GRIN

I found myself looking into an ornate room occupied by a squat, over-dressed woman and young man in the clothes of an hospital orderly. The place was thick with dust, strewn with unwashed dishes, cigarette butts rotting fruit... Suddenly the door was flung open revealing a small thin man wrapped in red bricaded silk. He held a gun. "Now!" he cried. "Hands on head - this is it!" He shot the orderly three times, point-blank. The orderly lay down on the floor, a faint smile on his face. Then the thin man shot the woman, who grimaced theatrically and collapsed on a dusty divan.

FIND A VICTIM

Lew archer finds a young Spanish-American dying in the ditch beside the highway. So begins a story of crime and intrigue that moves like lightening through California's rich and riotous Central Valley. It involves a call-girl who grew up too late, a sheriff caught between two passions and a woman who becomes the victim of her own murderous wish. As Archer fights his way into the case, he finds the key to murder in the disappearance of a beautiful woman.

THE NAME IS ARCHER

"I sat in my brand-new office with odor of paint in my nostrils and waited for something to happen..." When the name on the door is Archer, the chances are - something will. Millicient Dreen happened: a varnished red-head with hell green eyes and a disappearing daughter. After that the trouble came thick and fast. From Fresno to San Diego, on Sunset Boulevard and in Palm Springs, murder is your game and trouble is your name if - the name is Archer...

THE BARBAROUS COAST

"My name is Archer, Lew Archer ... cal me trouble, looking for a place to happen in ..." The place turns out to be Southern California, the trouble takes archer in search of a girl who jack-knifed too suddenly from high-diving to high-living and leads him on to an ex-fighter with an unexplained movie contract, a big-time gambler, the ghost of an eighteen-year-old girl whose murder was never solved, and finally to an answer he would rather not have known.

THE DOOMSTERS

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, exhausted and desperately in need of help. Mildred knew them, with her grave innocence and the loneliness that made her seem vulnerable. Even Zinnie knew them, Zinnie who was pseudo-Hollywood and definitely second hand. And Dr. Grantland had had his fill of them - a good doctor once, but now suffering from a heavy dose of lack of integrity. Only Archer hadn't met them: until he got himself talked into helping Carl, and found himself always a lap behind the next murder.

THE GALTON CASE

Almost twenty years have passed since Anthony Galton disappeared, along with a suspiciously streetwise bride and several thousand dollars of his family's fortune. Now Anthony's mother wants him back and has hired Lew Archer to find him. What turns up is a headless skeleton, a boy who claims to be Galton's son, and a con game whose stakes are so high that someone is still willing to kill for them.

THE ZEBRA STRIPED HEARSE

When Isobel Blackwell comes calling unexpectedly on Lew Archer just minutes before her husband is scheduled to meet with the detective, she expresses concern for her stepdaughter, Harriet. The young woman is about to come into a large trust fund, and she wants to marry a handsome, penniless artist named Burke Damis. Isobel has no objection to the marriage, but Harriet's father, Mark Blackwell, dislikes Damis and is staunchly opposed. Mr. Blackwell asks Archer to investigate Damis, and Archer agrees, partly because he's attracted to Mrs. Blackwell. Murders past and present crowd the investigation as various leads take Archer to Mexico, Lake Tahoe, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles. The Zebra-Striped Hearse is indeed colored black and white - but the intertwining relationships of the characters range across many shades of gray.

THE WYCHERLY WOMAN

Phoebe Wycherly was missing two months before her wealthy father hired Archer to find her. That was plenty of time for a young girl who wanted to disappear to do so thoroughly--or for someone to make her disappear. Before he can find the Wycherly girl, Archer has to deal with the Wycherly woman, Phoebe's mother, an eerily unmaternal blonde who keeps too many residences, has too many secrets, and leaves too many corpses in her wake.

THE CHILL

In The Chill a distraught young man hires Archer to track down his runaway bride. But no sooner has he found Dolly Kincaid than Archer finds himself entangled in two murders, one twenty years old, the other so recent that the blood is still wet. What ensues is a detective novel of nerve-racking suspense, desperately believable characters, and one of the most intricate plots ever spun by an American crime writer.

THE FAR SIDE OF THE DOLLAR

BLACK MONEY

When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on the suspiciously suave Frenchman who's run off with his client's girlfriend, it looks like a simple case of alienated affections. Things look different when the mysterious foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts. Black Money is Ross MacDonald at his finest.

THE INSTANT ENEMY

He chopped at my head with the loaded butt of his gun. I went out, all the way. After a while the darkness where I lay was invaded by dreams. Huge turning wheels resolved themselves into a diesel locomotive. I was lying limp across the tracks and the train was coming. It honked its horn at me. It wasn't a train sound, though, and I wasn't lying on a track, and it was no dream. I sat up in the middle of the highway. A truck was bearing down on me, its brakes shrieking. But it wasn't going to able to stop this time.

THE GOODBYE LOOK

In The Goodbye Look, Lew Archer is hired to investigate a burglary at the mission-style mansion of Irene and Larry Chalmers. The prime suspect, their son Nick, has a talent for disappearing, and the Chalmerses are a family with money and memories to burn. As Archer zeros in on Nick, he discovers a troubled blonde, a stash of wartime letters, a mysterious hobo. Then a stiff turns up in a car on an empty beach. And Nick turns up with a Colt .45. In The Goodbye Look, Ross Macdonald delves into the world of the rich and the troubled and reveals that the past has a deadly way of catching up to the present.

THE UNDERGROUND MAN

As a mysterious fire rages through an affluent community in Southern California, Lew Archer tracks a missing-and possibly kidnapped-child and uncovers an entire secret history of wayward parents, wounded offspring, and murder. Along with its merciless suspense, The Underground Man possesses a moral vision as complex as that of a classic Greek tragedy.

SLEEPING BEAUTY

In Sleeping Beauty, Lew Archer finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands--including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of Nembutal, a six-figure ransom, and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach. Here is Ross Macdonald's masterful tale of buried memories, the consequences of arrogance, and the anguished relations between parents and their children.

THE BLUE HAMMER (Classic Mystery Fiction)

I could see Rico approaching the foot of the pier, hunchbacked by the sack he had slung across his shoulders. I left my car and followed him on foot, walking softly and narrowing my distance. "Drop it, Rico", I said. "Get your hands up". He made a move to heave the sack overside. It struck the top rail and fell, spilling some of its contents on the planking. There were human bones caked with dirt, a damaged human skull, rusted engine parts form an old car. Rico turned on me swing. I moved inside his flailing arms and hit him several times in the belly, then once on the jaw. He went down and stayed down for a while...

LEW ARCHER, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

THE DARK TUNNEL

TROUBLE FOLLOWS ME

BLUE CITY

A crime novel in which a young man, just back from the war, discovers that his father has been killed on a street corner, and decides to solve the case himself, but this means immersing himself in the brutal underworld in which his father moved freely.

THE THREE ROADS

He remembered only their first meeting - the long continuous kiss in the taxi, the hotel, the panther-blackness of the night. It was the fulfillment of a promise too sweet to be believed. But she was dead. Murdered. And somewhere in the labyrinth of his tangled memory was the answer to this murder. He had to find the killer - but would he also meet his own destruction?

MEET ME AT THE MORGUE

THE FERGUSON AFFAIR