A crime novel in which a young man, just back from the war, discovers that his father has been killed on a street corner, and decides to solve the case himself, but this means immersing himself in the brutal underworld in which his father moved freely.

In The Far Side of the Dollar, private investigator Lew Archer is looking for an unstable rich kid who has run away from an exclusive reform school-and into the arms of kidnappers. Why are his desperate parents so loath to give Archer the information he needs to find him? And why do all trails lead to a derelict Hollywood hotel where starlets and sailors once rubbed elbows with two-bit grifters-and where the present clientele includes a brand-new...

Lew Archer has been hired to locate Phoebe Wycherly by her wealthy father, but first Archer must deal with "the Wycherly woman, Phoebe's mother, an eerily unmaternal blonde who kept too many residences, had too many secrets, and left too many corpses in her wake."--Back cover.

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...

In The Chill a distraught young man hires private investigator Lew 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. -- from Amazon....