The Ivory Grin
Page 22
“I hope so. It’s the soft ones, the self-pity boys like you, that give me bad dreams.” I had had enough of that basement, cluttered with broken objects, wet and hot and squalid with broken desires. “Let’s go, Benning.”
Outside, the flawed white moon was higher among the stars. Benning looked up at them as if the night had really become a cave of shadows, the moon a clouded port and the stars peepholes into a terrible brightness:
“I do feel grief for her. I loved her. There was nothing I wouldn’t do.”
He started down the veranda steps, his short black shadow dragging and jerking at his heels.
ALSO BY ROSS MACDONALD
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, baring the skull beneath the suntanned skin of Southern California’s high society.
Crime Fiction/978-0-679-76810-4
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, and a mysterious hobo. 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.
Crime Fiction/978-0-375-70865-7
FIND A VICTIM
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 hitchhiker, 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 marijuana, $20,000 from a big time bank heist by a small time crook, corruption, adultery, incest, prodigal daughters, and abused wives all make the little town seem a lot more interesting than any guide book ever could. And as the murder rate rises, Archer finds himself caught up in a mystery where everyone is a suspect and everyone’s a victim.
Crime Fiction/978-0-375-70867-1
“Ross Macdonald remains the grandmaster, taking the crime novel to new heights by imbuing it with psychological respondence, complexity of story, and richness of style that remain inspiring.”
—Jonathan Kellerman
THE MOVING TARGET
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. As Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the mega-rich to jazz joints where you get beaten up between sets, The Moving Target blends sex, greed, and family hatred into an explosively readable crime novel.
Crime Fiction/978-0-375-70146-7
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. Riveting, gritty, tautly written, Sleeping Beauty is crime fiction at its best
Crime Fiction/978-0-375-70866-4
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. Devious and poetic, The Galton Case displays Macdonald at the pinnacle of his form.
Crime Fiction/978-0-679-76864-7
“Lew Archer … is a crime-fighter of the old school; painstakingly searching out the twisting thread of suspense that leads him from the hint of one complicated drama to another.”
—Christian Science Monitor
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.
Crime Fiction/978-0-679-76807-4
THE FAR SIDE OF THE DOLLAR
Has Tom Hillman run away from his exclusive reform school, or has he been kidnapped? Are his wealthy parents protecting him or their own guilty secrets? And why does every clue lead Lew Archer to an abandoned Hollywood hotel, where starlets and sailors once rubbed shoulders with two-bit grifters—and where the present clientele includes a brand-new corpse? The result is Macdonald at his most exciting, delivering 1,000-volt shocks to the nervous system while uncovering the venality and depravity at the heart of the case.
Crime Fiction/978-0-679-76865-4
ALSO AVAILABLE:
The Underground Man, 978-0-679-76808-1
The Way Some People Die, 978-0-307-27898-2
Wycherly Woman, 978-0-375-70144-3
The Zebra-Striped Hearse, 978-0-375-70145-0
VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com.