Characters > Lew Archer
Featured Titles
The Moving Target
by Ross Macdonald
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 one of Sampson's friends may have arranged his kidnapping.
Year: 1949
Genre: Kidnapping, Private Eye
The Drowning Pool
by Ross Macdonald
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.
Year: 1950
Genre: Murder Mystery, Private Eye
The Way Some People Die
by Ross Macdonald
In a rundown house in Santa Monica, Mrs. Samuel Lawrence presses fifty crumpled bills into Lew Archer's hand and asks him to find her wandering daughter, Galatea. As the bodies begin to pile up, he finds that even angel faces can mask the blackest of hearts.Filled with dope, delinquents and murder, this is classic Macdonald and one of his very best in the Lew Archer series.
Year: 1951
Genre: Missing Person, Private Eye
The Ivory Grin
by Ross Macdonald
Traveling from sleazy motels to stately seaside manors, The Ivory Grin is one of Lew Archer's most violent and macabre cases ever.
Year: 1952
Genre: Private Eye
Find a Victim
by Ross Macdonald
Las Cruces wasn't a place most travelers would think to stop. But after private investigator Lew Archer plays the good samaritan and picks up a bloodied hitchhiker, he finds himself in town for a few days awaiting a murder inquest. And as the murder rate rises, Archer finds himself caught up in mystery where everyone is a suspect and everyone's a victim.
Year: 1954
Genre: Private Eye
The Barbarous Coast
by Ross Macdonald
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.
Year: 1956
Genre: Missing Person, Private Eye
The Doomsters
by Ross Macdonald
Hired by Carl Hallman, the desperate-eyed junkie scion of an obscenely wealthy political dynasty, detective Lew Archer investigates the suspicious deaths of his parents, Senator Hallman and his wife Alicia. Arriving in the sleepy town of Purissima, Archer discovers that orange groves may be where the Hallmans made their mint, but they've has been investing heavily in political intimidation and police brutality to shore up their rancid wealth.
Year: 1958
Genre: Private Eye
The Galton Case
by Ross Macdonald
Anthony Galton disappeared almost 20 years ago. Now his aging--and very rich--mother has hired Lew Archer to bring him back. What turns up is a headless skeleton, a suspicious heir, and a con man whose stakes are so high that someone is still willing to kill for them.
Year: 1959
Genre: Missing Person, Private Eye
The Wycherly Woman
by Ross Macdonald
Phoebe Wycherly was missing two months before her wealthy father hired Lew Archer to find her. But before he could locate the Wycherly girl, Archer had to reckon with the Wycherly woman, Phoebes mother, an eerily unmaternal blonde who kept too many secrets and left too many corpses in her wake.
Year: 1961
Genre: Missing Person, Private Eye
The Zebra-Striped Hearse
by Ross Macdonald
Strictly speaking, Lew Archer is only supposed to dig up the dirt on a rich man's suspicious soon-to-be son-in-law. But in no time at all Archer is following a trail of corpses from the citrus belt to Mazatlan.
Year: 1962
Genre: Private Eye
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