Somebody in Pacific Point is guilty of a kidnapping, but what probation officer Howard Cross wants to find most is innocence: in an ex-war hero who has taken a tough manslaughter rap, in a wealthy woman with a heart full of secrets, and in a blue-eyed beauty who has lost her way. The trouble is that the abduction has already turned to murder, and the more Cross pries into the case the further he slips into a pool of violence and evil. Somewhere in the California desert the whole scheme may come down on the wrong man. Somewhere Cross is going to find the last piece of a bloody puzzleβa mystery of blackmail, passion, and hidden identities that might be better left unsolved.
Review
βMy favorite . . . [Macdonald] is first among those novelists who raised the genre from its roots in pulp fiction to serious literature.β βP.D. James, from Talking About Detective Fiction
βAll the pace and excitement of earlier Macdonalds. . . . A legitimately surprising solution.β β The New York Times
βWithout in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either of them.β βAnthony Boucher
βCharacters in the round, believeable evil and clarity of telling make another fine Macdonald story.β β San Francisco Chronicle
β[The] American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zentih by Macdonald.β β New York Times Book Review
βMacdonald should not be limited in audience to connoisseurs of mystery fiction. He is one of a handful of writers in the genre whose worth and quality surpass the limitations of the form.β β Los Angeles Times
βMost mystery writers merely write about crime. Ross Macdonald writes about sin.β β The Atlantic
β[Macdonald] carried form and style about as far as they would go, writing classic family tragedies in the guise of private detective mysteries.β β The Guardian (London)
β[Ross Macdonald] gives to the detective story that accent of class that the late Raymond Chandler did.β β _Chicago Tribune
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About the Author
Ross Macdonaldβs real name was Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar returned to the U.S. as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Mystery Writers of Great Britain's Gold Dagger Award. He died in 1983.