Maxima Library

Prywant detektyw, Lew Archer, otrzymuje typowe zlecenie: ma odnaleźć obraz skradziony z zamożnego domu Biemeyerów. Obraz jest dziełem kalifornijskiego malarza, który rozgłos i sławę zdobył dopiero po swym tajemniczym zniknięciu. W trakcie poszukiwania zaginionego arcydzieła wychodzą na jaw tajemnice bohaterów. Archer stopniowo rozwiązuje zagadkę. Reakcją na jego działania jest seria makabrycznych zbrodni.

The sequel to Los Angeles Noir, an award-winning Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Ross Macdonald (1915–1983) was, according to The New York Times, the author of "the finest detective novels ever written by an American." His detective, Lew Archer, investigates character and place and the tensions and conflicts that form America. In Ross Macdonald's hands, Lew Archer's home turf, southern California, becomes symbolic and (perhaps more important) emblematic of the human struggle to make things right, to make sense of who we are.

In an important literary discovery, Macdonald biographer, Tom Nolan, unearthed three previously unpublished private-eye stories by Ross Macdonald. "Death by Water," written in 1945, features Macdonald's first detective Joe Rogers, and two novelettes from 1950 and 1955, "Strangers in Town" and "The Angry Man," are detailed cases of Lew Archer.

These 'lost' stories help the reader to understand why The New York Times also said that "classify him how you will, Ross Macdonald is one of the best American novelists now operating."

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…

Pulp fiction has been looked down on as a guilty pleasure, but it offers the perfect form of entertainment: the very best storytelling filled with action, surprises, sound and fury. In short, all the exhiliration of a roller-coaster ride. The 1920s in America saw the proliferation of hundreds of dubiously named but thrillingly entertaining pulp magazines in America: Black Mask, Amazing, Astounding, Spicy Stories, Ace-High, Detective Magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. It was in these luridly-coloured publications, printed on the cheapest pulp paper, that the first gems began to appear. The one golden rule for writers of pulp fiction was to adhere to the art of storytelling. Each story had to have a beginning, an end, economically-etched characters, but plenty going on, both in terms of action and emotions. Pulp magazines were the TV of their day, plucking readers from drab lives and planting them firmly in thrilling make-believe, successors...

Hillerman, author of the Joe Leaphorn mysteries, and Herbert, editor of The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, trace this short-story genre from its beginnings in the hands of Edgar Allen Poe through its development by the likes of Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Roberts Rinehart and Anthony Boucher to its current practice by such masters as Marcia Muller. Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which established a great many of the whodunit conventions, is indispensable to such an overview. Raymond Chandler's "I'll be Waiting" emits a doom-laden atmosphere right from the first line; William Faulkner shows unexpected economy of language?and a transparent plot?in "An Error in Chemistry." Ed McBain scores high marks in "Small Homicide," in which the tiny details of a baby's untimely death resonate uncomfortably. As represented in this competent, unstartling collection, Linda Barnes ("Lucky Penny") easily outsasses Sue Grafton ("The Parker Shotgun"). Hillerman makes a solid appearance with "Chee's Witch," and in "Benny's Space" Muller captures the full subtle force of her novel-length vision.