When a millionaire matriarch is found floating face down in the family pool, the prime suspects are her good-for-nothing son and his wife, who stand to inherit, as well as a questionable chauffeur and a tycoon of a company trying to get the woman's property for the oil under it.
Private Investigator Lew Archer takes this case in the Los Angeles suburbs and encounters a moral wasteland of corporate greed and family hatred--and sufficient motive for a dozen murders.
About the Author :
Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) was the pen name of Kenneth Millar. For over twenty years he lived in Santa Barbara and wrote mystery novels about the fascinating and changing society of his native state. He is widely credited with elevating the detective novel to the level of literature with his compactly written tales of murder and despair. His works have received awards from the Mystery Writers of America and of Great Britain, and his book The Moving Target was made into the movie Harper in 1966. In 1982 he was awarded the Eye Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Private Eye Writers of America.
Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the "Best Voices of the Century" and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.
Review :
"[Grover Gardner]'s narration perfectly captures Archer's world-weary persona and is by turns crisp, sardonic, and wry...Only references to prices and technology remind us that the story features a different time."
-- "AudioFile"
"Archer solves crimes with the instincts of a psychologist and the conscience of a priest, and the mid-twentieth-century Southern California setting is a wonderful ride in the Wayback Machine."
-- "Los Angeles Times, praise for the series"
"Macdonald picked up the baton dropped by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and took the genre to new heights...The Drowning Pool returns to...the complex and compelling plotting, psychological depth, just enough mayhem, and highly economical prose."
-- "Amazon.com"
"Ross Macdonald remains the grandmaster, taking the crime novel to new heights by imbuing it with psychological resonance, complexity of story, and richness of style."
-- "Jonathan Kellerman, New York Times bestselling author, praise for the author"
"The plots involve murder, deceit, blackmail, sex, and all those other goodies that make for great crime stories."
-- "Library Journal, praise for the series"
"Fast moving, smoothly written, first-rate whodunit of the hard-boiled school."
-- "New York Times Book Review"
