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Written by 
- Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
- Publisher: Vintage
- On Sale: July 10, 2007
- Price: $15.00
- ISBN: 978-0-307-27899-9 (0-307-27899-9)
about this book
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 tracks the wayward maid to a ramshackle motel in a seedy, run-down small town, but finds her dead in her tiny room, with her throat slit from ear to ear. Archer digs deeper into the case and discovers a web of deceit and intrigue, with crazed number-runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls, and a golden-boy shipping heir who’s gone mysteriously missing.
“Macdonald's spare, controlled narration, built for action and speed, conveys the world through which the action moves and gives it meaning, [bringing] scene and character, however swiftly, before the eye without a blur.”
—Eudora Welty, The New York Times Book Review
"Archer-Macdonald are working together at their peak, piecing together a most modern American tragedy, making literature out of the thriller form, gazing more clearly the ever into the future as it rolls through the smog.”
—Newsweek
“Ross Macdonald must be ranked high amongst American thriller-writers.”
—Times Literary Supplement
