Black Money

Description

'I can't make your girl come back if she doesn't want to. I told you that on the phone...' When Lew Archer is hired to find out the truth about a suspiciously suave Frenchman who has run off with his client's girlfriend, it looks like a simple enough case. But things start to look very different when Archer connects the elusive foreigner with a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts. BLACK MONEY is Ross Macdonald at his very finest, revealing the skull beneath the sun-kissed skin of Southern California.

Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) was the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar, who was born in California and educated in Canada and at the University of Michigan, where he also taught. In 1938 he married the writer Margaret Millar. He served in the United States Naval Reserve from 1944 to 1946. He published his first novel, THE DARK TUNNEL, in 1944, and his first Lew Archer story, THE MOVING TARGET, in 1949. He became a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America in 1973.

A beautiful job, rich in plot and character...surprising and shocking * NEW YORK TIMES * A great writer exploring psychopathology in Southern California... a crafter of complex, emotionally evocative plots -- Jonathan Kellerman The finest series of detective novels ever written by an American -- William Goldman The best private eye in the business * SUNDAY TIMES * This welcome reissue of one of Macdonald's best novels reminds us once again what an important writer he was * CATHOLIC HERALD * MacDonald should not be limited in audience to connoisseurs of mystery fiction. He is one of a handful of writers in the genre whose worth and quality surpass the limitations of the form * LA TIMES * This is quite simply a gem of its genre! * TELEGRAPH & ARGUS * Without in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross MacDonald is a better novelist than either of them -- Anthony Boucher * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW * I love the Lew Archer books -- James Ellroy The finest writer of "hard-boiled" private detective stories since Raymond Chandler * NEW YORK TIMES * This welcome reissue of one of Macdonald's best novels reminds us once again what an important writer he was * CATHOLIC HERALD * [A]n enjoyable racy thriller. . . this is quite simply a gem of its genre! * TELEGRAPH & ARGUS *