Prywant detektyw, Lew Archer, otrzymuje typowe zlecenie: ma odnale?? obraz skradziony z zamo?nego domu Biemeyer?w. Obraz jest dzie?em kalifornijskiego malarza, kt?ry rozg?os i s?aw? zdoby? dopiero po swym tajemniczym znikni?ciu. W trakcie poszukiwania zaginionego arcydzie?a wychodz? na jaw tajemnice bohater?w. Archer stopniowo rozwi?zuje zagadk?. Reakcj? na jego dzia?ania jest seria makabrycznych zbrodni.
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 the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer find himself smack in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared. He left behind a bevy of muses, molls, dolls, and dames-each one scrambling for what they thought was rightfully theirs.
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 , Lew Archer takes this case in the L.A. suburbs and encounters a moral wasteland of corporate greed and family hatred—and sufficient motive for a dozen murders.
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 rock, and he suspected that a missing Hollywood starlet was the key to a busy crime ring. But while Gunnarson made his way through a storm of deception, money, drugs, and passions, he couldn't guess how some big shots and small-timers would all end up with murder in common…
