There are 18 novels in the Lew Archer series, and this is number 8. It’s one of the four chosen by the Library of America for their Ross Macdonald collection — the same four I would have picked, based on my reading of the eight so far. It’s terrific. I feel sad. It’s got to be downhill from here.

The plot is launched when an aged millionaire hires Archer, through her lawyer, to find the son who left the family under unpleasant circumstances decades before. She’s dying, and wants to reconcile first. But the man Archer turns up isn’t the missing son, but a young man who looks and sounds just like him and claims to be his son, though he grew up far away and never knew his father, the missing heir. The son seems honest enough, but his story is suspicious, the criminal underground seems always to be on the edge of the picture, and there are tens of millions of dollars in inheritance at stake. Is the boy a ringer in a con years in the making? And whose are the headless bones found under a housing development on the coast of the South Bay?

The mystery seems to be resolved, and the client is satisfied. But Archer wants all the loose ends tied up. He makes an ill-advised trip to Nevada and ends up in the hospital; he spends the last half of the book making people wonder how many buses he got hit by. We’ve come a long way since the first Archer book, when he was knocked unconscious three times in 36 hours only to pop up repeatedly like an inflatable punching bag. He’s become a believable character. The tolerance for gray moral areas he picked up in the last book, The Doomsters, has stuck, too, and serves him well.

As with the previous two books in the series, I’d be happy to read this book again, just a few days after finishing it. The book’s plot is complex and ingenious, and the resolution throws a new light on everything that led up to it. And while elements of the story are grim, it’s not nihilist-bleak; it even ends, literally, on a hopeful note. ( )

Really liked it, fast-paced, well plotted Private Eye mystery ( )

Localizar al heredero desaparecido de una de las mayores fortunas de California puede parecer una tarea rutinaria y carente de interés. Pero cuando se contrata a un detective tan dispuesto a remover cimientos como Lew Archer, uno se arriesga a darse de bruces con verdades incómodas.

Great Ross M. read. Archer investigating whether or not the apparent son of the rich heiress is really who he says he is, with lots of good characters, mobsters and so forth thrown in. ( )

Unexpected gem of a book. Lew Archer is hired to find the long missing son of a very rich woman. The case has twists and turns galore as well as a detective that manages the hard boiled thing while still making me like him. A great classic mystery ( )