Ross Macdonald from I Cannot Live Without Books

Trouble Follows Me (Chet Gordon Series, Book #2) by Ross Macdonald It is February 1945, and the war in the Pacific is nearing its climax. In Hawaii on his way to a new post, U.S. Navy ensign Sam Drake stumbles across the girl of his dreams. Mary is a disc jockey, with a voice that's famous across the islands for playing… Read more about this item

The Way Some People Die (Lew Archer Series, Book #3) by Ross Macdonald In a rundown house in Santa Monica, Mrs. Samuel Lawrences presses fifty crumpled bills into Lew Archer's hand and asks him to find her wandering daughter, Galatea. Described as "crazy for men" and without discrimination, she was last seen driving off with small-time gangster Joe Tarantine, a hophead… Read more about this item

The Blue Hammer (Lew Archer Series, Book #18) by Ross Macdonald The desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness, and only Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art. Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Detective Lew Archer, but that was before… Read more about this item

Black Money (Lew Archer Series, Book #13) by Ross Macdonald When 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. Vintage… Read more about this item

The Instant Enemy (Lew Archer Series, Book # 14) by Ross Macdonald At first glance, it's an open-and-shut missing persons case: a headstrong daughter has run off to be with her hothead juvenile delinquent boyfriend. That is until this bush-league Bonnie & Clyde kidnap Stephen Hackett, a local millionaire industrialist. Now, Archer is offered a coll 100 Gs for Hackett's safe… Read more about this item

The Underground Man (Lew Archer Series, Book #16) by Ross Macdonald 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… Read more about this item

The Ivory Grin (Lew Archer Series, Book #4) by Ross Macdonald A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he's being fed a line, but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts the case. He… Read more about this item

The Drowning Pool (Lew Archer Series, Book #2) 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. 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 --… Read more about this item

The Ferguson Affair by Ross Macdonald It was a long way from the million-dollar Foothill Club to Pelly Street, where grudges were settled in blood and Spanish, and a stolen diamond ring landed a girl in jail. Defense lawyer Bill Gunnarson was making the trip -- fast. He already knew a kidnapping at the club was tied to the girl's hot… Read more about this item

Sleeping Beauty (Lew Archer Series, Book #17) by Ross Macdonald 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… Read more about this item

The Wycherly Woman (Lew Archer Series, Book #9) by Ross Macdonald 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. And before he could locate the Wycherly girl, Archer had… Read more about this item

The Goodbye Look (Lew Archer Series, Book #15) by Ross Macdonald In The Goodbye Look, Lew Archer is hired to investigate a burglary of the mission-style mansion of Irene and Larry Chalmers. The prime suspect, their son Nick, has a talent for disappearing, and the Chalmers's are a family with money and memories to burn. As Archer zeros in on Nick,… Read more about this item

Find a Victim (Lew Archer Series, Book #5) by Ross Macdonald Las Cruces wasn't a place most travelers would think to stop. But after Lew Archer plays the good Samaritan and picks up a bloodied hitch-hiker, he finds himself in town for a few days awaiting a murder inquest. A hijacked truck full of liquor and an evidence box full of… Read more about this item

The Barbarous Coast (Lew Archer Series, Book #6) 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… Read more about this item

The Galton Case (Lew Archer Series, Book #8) by Ross Macdonald 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… Read more about this item

The Doomsters (Lew Archer Series, Book #7) 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 Hallman's 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… Read more about this item

Meet Me at the Morgue by Ross Macdonald Somebody in Pacific Point is guilty of a kidnapping, but what probation officer Howard Cross wants to find most is innocence: in an ex-war hero who has taken a tough manslaughter rap, in a wealthy woman with a heart full of secrets, and in a blue-eyed beauty who has lost her way. The… Read more about this item

Blue City by Ross Macdonald He was a son who hadn't known his father very well. It was a town shaken by a grisly murder -- his father's murder. Johnny Weather was home from a war and wandering. When he found out that his father had been assassinated on a street corner and that his father's seductive young wife had inherited… Read more about this item

The Dark Tunnel (Chet Gordon Series, Book #1) by Ross Macdonald In 1937 Munich, an American, must be careful when he smokes his pipe. Robert Branch, a careless academic, makes the mistake of lighting up when the Fuhrer is about to begin a procession and nearly gets pummeled for his mistake. Only the timely intervention of Ruth Esch, a flame-haired actress,… Read more about this item

The Three Roads by Ross Macdonald Silken skin, pale against dark hair, red lips provocatively smiling at him -- that's how Lieutenant Bret Taylor remembered Lorraine. He was drunk when he married her, stone cold sober when he found her dead. Out on the sunlit streets of L.A. walked the man -- her lover, her killer -- who had been with… Read more about this item