Black Money

By Ross Macdonald

When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on the suspiciously suave Frenchman who's run off with his client's girlfriend, it looks like a simple case of alienated affections. Things look different when the mysterious foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts. Black Money is Ross Macdonald at his finest, baring the skull beneath the untanned skin of Southern California's high society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307759566

Ross Macdonald

Ross MacDonald is an illustrator whose work has appeared in international publications. He lives in Connecticut.

Reviews for Black Money

[phillipfrey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You cannot go wrong when purchasing a Ross MacDonald book whose protagonist is PI Lew Archer.

[loraineo_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another great book featuring the detective, Lew Archer. This time he's hired to find the girlfriend of his rich client. Set in the 1960's in Southern California.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the better books in the Lew Archer series!

[rascalstar · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This detective/crime story was on my bookshelves, and I hope to eventually read all books and pass some on. I didn't care for this book, though I think some readers might like it. Copyright 1965. Several murders occur and a detective gets involved. People aren't who they seem to be. It's a good enough yarn for light reading.

[ecw0647 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ross MacDonald was a master at unraveling the twisted and intermingled minds of the southern California upper crust. Lew Archer would manage to reveal the killer by constant prying and making deductions from what he learned. Nothing was ever as it appeared. He was a terrific writer and this audiobook was spectacularly narrated, as always, by Jonathan Marosz.

[dinoreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The only bad thing about reading another Ross Macdonald, Lew Archer, novel is knowing that there is a finite number of them and now one less is left. He's not perfect but he is about as good as it gets.

Black Money is Macdonald at his best.

I notice one thing: Macdonald usually, but not always, begins and ends chapters with a unique description of the setting or a person. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

While he knowingly is writing hard boiled fiction, Macdonald is sentimental enough that he includes observations about life that sometimes work, sometimes don't work. Most of the time, I wish he had left them out as they were already obvious from character action.

Still, just wonderful stuff.

[stevealdous · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Complex tale filled with flawed characters all of whom have things to hide. MacDonald's Lew Archer glides over this as he unravels a mystery going back seven years. He is as much an observer as detective. The book is deliberately paced, introducing the key protagonists through the first half and then ratcheting up the suspense as the hidden truth is slowly revealed.

[wildbill_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Black money is the money that never shows up on the books. Big sums of cash that make you instantly rich.A seductive Frenchman comes out of nowhere and a rich, chubby and ineffectual heir hires Archer to get his girlfriend back.The Frenchman is slick, rich and not at all who he appears to be. He helps to add an edge of danger to the story.Harper keeps going following every clue until he has the answer. The story, set in the world of the rich and the used to be rich, moved very well. Archer stays the dead pan detective who throws in enough sarcastic dialog to let you know he is always listening.The change of identities at the end is straight out of a William Shakespeare comedy, except for the dead bodies.The plot moved very well and the characters are mostly rich people on the edge of not being rich.I give it four stars for a good ending.