The Archy McNally Series

The Palm Beach private eye is back—in three more adventures by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author and “master of suspense” (The Washington Post).   In his long-running, New York Times–bestselling mystery series set in South Florida, Edgar Award–winning author Lawrence Sanders gave readers “his most delightful character”—a charming playboy turned Palm Beach PI by the name of Archy McNally (Chicago Tribune).   McNally’s Caper: In this New York Times bestseller, Griswold Forsythe II wants to know which greedy, conniving relative is making off with the family treasures, including an original Picasso and an irreplaceable Edgar Allan Poe first edition. Suspects abound, including the sexy Forsythe women who all seem to find McNally irresistible. But things take a nasty turn when Griswold is murdered.   McNally’s Trial: In the past six months, Whitcomb Funeral Homes in southern Florida has shipped out five hundred dead bodies. Why are so many caskets leaving the Sunshine State and being airlifted to New York, Boston, and Chicago? Called in to investigate, McNally’s about to blow the lid off a most unusual case in this New York Times bestseller.   McNally’s Puzzle: Hiram Gottschalk, the owner of the Palm Beach shop Parrots Unlimited, fears for his life. He turns to McNally after someone slashes a photo of him and his late wife and then wrings the neck of his beloved pet bird. Turns out he was right to be scared. When his client is stabbed in his sleep, McNally’s determined to ruffle some feathers to find the killer.

If anyone can connect a dead waiter in a pool, a deceased duchess, and a possibly phony heir, it’s the Palm Beach PI—in this New York Times bestseller.  Malcolm MacNiff’s annual Tennis Everyone!fundraiser is the high point of the Palm Beach season. But the glittering A-list event hits rock bottom when a waiter is found floating face down in the pool.  Archy McNally instantly suspects foul play. No sooner are his fears confirmed than he has another mystery to solve. Society’s abuzz over the recent arrival of Lance Talbot from Switzerland to claim his half-billion inheritance from his grandmother’s estate, but some claim that Talbot’s a fraud. It falls to McNally to sift through the clues and uncover a murderous scam that stretches from the snowy Alps all the way to sunny Florida.  

The final book in the New York Times–bestselling series is “a wacky, waggish whodunit,” as the Palm Beach PI investigates a dead end in a maze (Publishers Weekly). The night Palm Beach society has been eagerly awaiting has finally arrived. Matthew Hayes, once the human cannonball in a traveling carnival and now a retired millionaire, is unveiling his Amazin’ Maze, styled after the historic hedge maze at England’s Hampton Court Palace. But even this wonder is upstaged by Hayes’s wife—when she’s found dead in the center of the labyrinth. Marvelous Marlena Marvel, a sideshow wonder of amazing pulchritude, was a devotee of the black arts. But the motive for her murder is as murky as her mystical talents . . . especially when Archy McNally uncovers a link to another homicide. It’s a crime scene straight out of Barnum & Bailey as McNally employs his own sleight-of-hand to catch a killer about to pull off the greatest vanishing act of all. 

New York Times bestseller: A mystery “full of twists and turns” set among the elite society of Palm Beach (Library Journal).   The Palm Beach tennis season starts off with a bang when a pro is shot by his wife after she catches him with another woman. For Archy McNally, private investigator to the rich and infamous, the case seems open and shut. The killer, twice-married socialite Melva Williams, confesses to offing her cheating spouse in a moment of passion. Now she wants McNally to do her a favor: Keep the paparazzi away from her daughter, Veronica. Playing babysitter to the beautiful Veronica and remaining faithful to his fiancée prove beyond McNally’s capabilities. Before he can sort out his private life, blackmail enters the picture. As McNally attempts to find the truth amidst all the lies, his investigation must include a look into the past—and a tragedy that the world will never forget. 

Murder puts Lawrence Sanders’s Palm Beach PI in the prime suspect spotlight in the series “effortlessly written to be effortlessly enjoyed” (The Boston Globe). Hired to retrieve a client’s kiss-and-tell-all diary from her blackmailing ex-lover, Archy McNally doesn’t expect the mission to go awry. He makes the exchange easily enough, but as the Palm Beach private investigator returns to his sports car, he’s knocked out cold. When he wakes up, the diary is gone. Except it wasn’t a diary McNally was playing go-between to collect. It was the Holy Grail of lost literature—the original manuscript of Truman Capote’sAnswered Prayers. McNally will need some divine intervention of his own when he becomes the prime suspect in a homicide investigation headed by vampy, green-eyed blonde Georgia O’Hara. With everyone trying to seize the Capote opus, it’s up to McNally to write off a killer who’s waiting to close the book on him—permanently.  

The Palm Beach sleuth tries to find a thief—and a killer—among a rich, eccentric family, in this New York Times bestseller. Archy McNally, the parttime investigator and fulltime bon vivant,takes on the curious case of a thief with exquisite taste within the eccentric Forsythe family. Griswold Forsythe II wants to know which greedy, conniving relative is making off with the family treasures, including an original Picasso and an irreplaceable Edgar Allan Poe first edition. Suspects abound, including the sexy Forsythe women who all seem to find McNally irresistible. But things take a nasty turn when Griswold is murdered. Who wanted to off the family patriarch—and why? Inside the lavish, baronial estate, McNally’s uncovering some pretty damning dirt, including illegitimate offspring and a resident ghost. As things heat up, McNally had better watch his back—or he, himself, could end up six feet under.  

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author: Florida PI Archy McNally takes on a deceptively simply case of pet abduction, where bad luck can be deadly.  Archy McNally enjoys sipping late-night port with his girlfriend of the moment and tooling across southern Florida in his red Miata sports car. In his off hours, he works as a part-time investigator for his father’s venerable law firm. His latest assignment? Solve a simple catnapping. But, as McNally knows, things are rarely as simple as they seem. Soon, the case of the missing Peaches, a foul-tempered, overweight Persian, morphs into the murder of a prominent Palm Beach woman. Uncovering a chilling connection between the two cases sends McNally into a psychological game of cat and mouse. As he lays a trap that could be catnip for the killer, he is faced with the reality that felines may have nine lives but he has only one.  

When the husband of an actress sips a poisoned potable, Lawrence Sanders’s beloved Palm Beach PI must stage an investigation from his director’s chair.  One of the most celebrated stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Desdemona Darling, has come South for the season. She makes headlines when she agrees to star in the Palm Beach Community Theater’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Archy McNally somehow gets roped into directing—and into discreetly investigating who could be blackmailing his star. Life tragically imitates art when Richard Holmes—Darling’s Husband Number Seven—sips some elderberry wine laced with arsenic at the cast party. Holmes was a self-made millionaire with a genius for betting on pork bellies. But who’d want him dead? As McNally tries to smoke out the culprit, he wonders if he’s getting too close to a remorseless killer who’s about to drop the curtain on another victim.  

Family ties ensnare Lawrence Sanders’s Archy McNally, “a raffish combination of Dashiell Hammett’s Nick Charles and P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster” (The New York Times Book Review).  Bestselling author Sabrina Wright wants dapper detective Archy McNally to find her husband, who vanished while looking for her MIA daughter—it may seem like a simple case, but McNally knows it’s never that easy. Thirty-year-old Gillian Wright ran off to find her birth father, opening a Pandora’s box of scandalous revelations the tabloids can’t resist. It seems that Sabrina’s life was a bigger fiction than her bodice-ripping romances. Before her story is over, three powerful men with damning secrets could be outed . . . and murder will be the denouement. As McNally stumbles on one cover-up after another, he has one last chance to catch a killer who will stop at nothing to protect his name.  

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author: Palm Beach sleuth Archy McNally’s feathers are ruffled when a bird store owner is killed.  Hiram Gottschalk, owner of the Palm Beach shop Parrots Unlimited, fears for his life. First, he finds a photo of himself and his deceased wife slashed to ribbons; then, a Mass card with his name on it is taped inside of his closet door; now, someone has wrung the neck of his beloved pet bird. In desperation, he turns to McNally & Son for a private investigation. McNally meets with Gottschalk, along with his client’s cursing parrot. McNally wisely ignores the bird’s command to go to hell, but he can’t ignore the fallout when his client is stabbed in his sleep and Gottschalk’s unstable son, Peter, becomes the prime suspect. When more victims turn up, McNally has to puzzle out the motives of a murderer who has just killed two more birds with one stone . . . and is now targeting the dapper detective. 

Is a Florida widow being conned out of a fortune? The debonair detective tries to find out in this novel in the #1 New York Times–bestselling series.   At first, Archy McNally was unofficially enlisted to verify the bona fides of a deal for a rare Fabergé Imperial egg, created exclusively for the doomed Czar Nicholas in 1917. But when Edythe Westmore’s son and daughter become convinced the trinket is a fake and their mother is being conned, McNally is asked to deep-six the whole deal. He gets more than he bargained for when Natalie Westmore and her brother’s wife, Helen, both try to seduce him. The Palm Beach detective will need to employ some fancy footwork as he reveals a mess of lust, greed, and murder that smells worse than a rotten egg. Now it’s his own neck McNally’s risking to lay a trap for someone who’s counting dividends before they hatch. 

More murder, greed, and secrets for the Palm Beach private eye created by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author and “master of suspense” (The Washington Post).   In his long-running, New York Times–bestselling mystery series set in South Florida, Edgar Award–winning author Lawrence Sanders gave readers “his most delightful character”—a charming playboy turned Palm Beach PI by the name of Archy McNally (Chicago Tribune).   McNally’s Gamble: In this New York Times bestseller, McNally is enlisted to verify the bona fides of a deal for a rare Fabergé Imperial egg. But when widow Edythe Westmore’s children become convinced the trinket is a fake and their mother is being conned, McNally cracks open a case of lust, greed, and murder that stinks like a rotten egg. Now the detective will have to scramble to lay a trap for someone who’s counting dividends before they hatch.   McNally’s Dilemma: In this New York Times bestseller, the Palm Beach tennis season starts off with a bang when a pro is shot by his wife after she catches him with another woman. Socialite Melva Williams confesses to offing her cheating spouse but wants her old friend Archy McNally to do her a favor: keep the press and paparazzi away from her beautiful daughter. The tempting Veronica is quite a handful, but more troubling is that her story and her mother’s don’t match.   McNally’s Folly: Golden Age Hollywood diva Desdemona Darling makes headlines when she agrees to star in the Palm Beach Community Theater’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace. McNally gets roped into directing while he’s discreetly investigating who’s blackmailing the actress. But after Darling’s Husband Number Seven sips some elderberry wine laced with arsenic at the cast party, McNally needs to shine a spotlight on the killer before it’s curtains for somebody else.

The Palm Beach PI is on the case of a corpse conspiracy. “Lawrence Sanders has honed a voice for Archy McNally that is wonderfully infectious” (The Washington Times). Business is booming at Whitcomb Funeral Homes in southern Florida. Called in to investigate this inexplicable uptick, Palm Beach private investigator Archy McNally finds himself in the middle of a most unusual case.  In the past six months, Whitcomb has shipped out five hundred dead bodies. Why are so many caskets leaving the Sunshine State and being airlifted to New York, Boston, and Chicago? And why did Whitcomb’s comely comptroller come to McNally & Son in the first place? Further complicating McNally’s life are his air-headed buddy, Binky Watrous, who wants to be his private-eye assistant, and his faithful love, Connie Garcia, who’s got her spies when it comes to McNally’s weakness for the ladies. Murder worthy of the headline Death-styles of the Rich and Famous add to McNally’s tribulations. And the next set of human remains could be his.   

First in the series starring the sleuthing Palm Beach playboy from the #1 New York Times–bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author.  Inveterate playboy Archy McNally gets paid to make discreet inquiries for Palm Beach’s power elite. But keeping their dirty little secrets buried will take some fancy footwork in McNally’s latest case. A block of priceless 1918 US airmail stamps has gone missing from a high-society matron’s wall safe. Lady Cynthia Horowitz, now on her sixth husband, is a nasty piece of work who lives in a mansion that looks like Gone With the Wind’s Tara transplanted to southern Florida. McNally’s search takes him into a thickening maze of sex, lies, scandal, and blackmail. When passion erupts into murder and McNally must dig even deeper to uncover the truth, he unearths a shocking secret that could expose his own family’s skeletons.   

A seductive socialite entangles a Palm Beach sleuth in a viper’s nest of lust and larceny in this New York Times bestseller.  Checking out the background of a wealthy client’s prospective daughter-in-law should be easy money for Palm Beach private investigator Archy McNally—until people around gorgeous socialite Theodosia Johnson start being killed off at an alarming rate. The first to die is Theodosia’s portrait painter, who gets his throat slashed. Next, a blackmailing stripper ends up with a bullet in her head. McNally must expose the killer, but it’s Theodosia, herself, who turns out to be the biggest mystery of all. When she sets out to seduce McNally, he isn’t sure whether he’s being played, so he orchestrates his own scam to uncover the truth. If his scheme backfires, it could cost the dapper detective his livelihood—and his life.  

A playboy PI becomes entangled with passion, murder, and unabashed greed in these three adventures by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author. Privileged bachelor Archy McNally enjoys sipping late-night port with his girlfriend of the moment and tooling around South Florida in his red Miata sports car. Only occasionally does he get around to doing actual work as a part-time investigator for his father’s law firm. In these three witty novels, he’s paid to make discreet inquiries for Palm Beach’s elite—who are rarely what they seem.   McNally’s Secret: When Lady Cynthia Horowitz’s priceless 1918 US airmail stamps go missing from her plantation-style mansion, McNally unearths a shocking secret that could expose his own family’s skeletons. His search thrusts him into a thickening maze of sex, scandal, blackmail, and murder.   McNally’s Luck: McNally’s latest assignment is a simple catnapping. But, as McNally knows, things are rarely as simple as they seem. Soon, the case of the missing foul-tempered, overweight Persian morphs into the murder of a prominent Palm Beach woman. And when McNally uncovers a chilling connection between the two cases, he’s plunged into a psychological game of cat and mouse.   McNally’s Risk: Checking out the background of a wealthy client’s prospective daughter-in-law should be easy—but when the people around Theodosia Johnson start being killed off, McNally must expose the murderer. Theodosia herself is the biggest mystery though. And as she sets out to seduce McNally, he’ll have to orchestrate his own scam to uncover the truth.

When the husband of an actress sips a poisoned potable, Lawrence Sanders’s beloved Palm Beach PI must stage an investigation from his director’s chair.  One of the most celebrated stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Desdemona Darling, has come South for the season. She makes headlines when she agrees to star in the Palm Beach Community Theater’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Archy McNally somehow gets roped into directing—and into discreetly investigating who could be blackmailing his star. Life tragically imitates art when Richard Holmes—Darling’s Husband Number Seven—sips some elderberry wine laced with arsenic at the cast party. Holmes was a self-made millionaire with a genius for betting on pork bellies. But who’d want him dead? As McNally tries to smoke out the culprit, he wonders if he’s getting too close to a remorseless killer who’s about to drop the curtain on another victim.  

First in the series starring the sleuthing Palm Beach playboy from the #1 New York Times–bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author.  Inveterate playboy Archy McNally gets paid to make discreet inquiries for Palm Beach’s power elite. But keeping their dirty little secrets buried will take some fancy footwork in McNally’s latest case. A block of priceless 1918 US airmail stamps has gone missing from a high-society matron’s wall safe. Lady Cynthia Horowitz, now on her sixth husband, is a nasty piece of work who lives in a mansion that looks like Gone With the Wind’s Tara transplanted to southern Florida. McNally’s search takes him into a thickening maze of sex, lies, scandal, and blackmail. When passion erupts into murder and McNally must dig even deeper to uncover the truth, he unearths a shocking secret that could expose his own family’s skeletons.   

Family ties ensnare Lawrence Sanders’s Archy McNally, “a raffish combination of Dashiell Hammett’s Nick Charles and P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster” (The New York Times Book Review).  Bestselling author Sabrina Wright wants dapper detective Archy McNally to find her husband, who vanished while looking for her MIA daughter—it may seem like a simple case, but McNally knows it’s never that easy. Thirty-year-old Gillian Wright ran off to find her birth father, opening a Pandora’s box of scandalous revelations the tabloids can’t resist. It seems that Sabrina’s life was a bigger fiction than her bodice-ripping romances. Before her story is over, three powerful men with damning secrets could be outed . . . and murder will be the denouement. As McNally stumbles on one cover-up after another, he has one last chance to catch a killer who will stop at nothing to protect his name.  

The Palm Beach sleuth tries to find a thief—and a killer—among a rich, eccentric family, in this New York Times bestseller. Archy McNally, the parttime investigator and fulltime bon vivant,takes on the curious case of a thief with exquisite taste within the eccentric Forsythe family. Griswold Forsythe II wants to know which greedy, conniving relative is making off with the family treasures, including an original Picasso and an irreplaceable Edgar Allan Poe first edition. Suspects abound, including the sexy Forsythe women who all seem to find McNally irresistible. But things take a nasty turn when Griswold is murdered. Who wanted to off the family patriarch—and why? Inside the lavish, baronial estate, McNally’s uncovering some pretty damning dirt, including illegitimate offspring and a resident ghost. As things heat up, McNally had better watch his back—or he, himself, could end up six feet under.  

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author: Palm Beach sleuth Archy McNally’s feathers are ruffled when a bird store owner is killed.  Hiram Gottschalk, owner of the Palm Beach shop Parrots Unlimited, fears for his life. First, he finds a photo of himself and his deceased wife slashed to ribbons; then, a Mass card with his name on it is taped inside of his closet door; now, someone has wrung the neck of his beloved pet bird. In desperation, he turns to McNally & Son for a private investigation. McNally meets with Gottschalk, along with his client’s cursing parrot. McNally wisely ignores the bird’s command to go to hell, but he can’t ignore the fallout when his client is stabbed in his sleep and Gottschalk’s unstable son, Peter, becomes the prime suspect. When more victims turn up, McNally has to puzzle out the motives of a murderer who has just killed two more birds with one stone . . . and is now targeting the dapper detective. 

New York Times bestseller: A mystery “full of twists and turns” set among the elite society of Palm Beach (Library Journal).   The Palm Beach tennis season starts off with a bang when a pro is shot by his wife after she catches him with another woman. For Archy McNally, private investigator to the rich and infamous, the case seems open and shut. The killer, twice-married socialite Melva Williams, confesses to offing her cheating spouse in a moment of passion. Now she wants McNally to do her a favor: Keep the paparazzi away from her daughter, Veronica. Playing babysitter to the beautiful Veronica and remaining faithful to his fiancée prove beyond McNally’s capabilities. Before he can sort out his private life, blackmail enters the picture. As McNally attempts to find the truth amidst all the lies, his investigation must include a look into the past—and a tragedy that the world will never forget. 

Is a Florida widow being conned out of a fortune? The debonair detective tries to find out in this novel in the #1 New York Times–bestselling series.   At first, Archy McNally was unofficially enlisted to verify the bona fides of a deal for a rare Fabergé Imperial egg, created exclusively for the doomed Czar Nicholas in 1917. But when Edythe Westmore’s son and daughter become convinced the trinket is a fake and their mother is being conned, McNally is asked to deep-six the whole deal. He gets more than he bargained for when Natalie Westmore and her brother’s wife, Helen, both try to seduce him. The Palm Beach detective will need to employ some fancy footwork as he reveals a mess of lust, greed, and murder that smells worse than a rotten egg. Now it’s his own neck McNally’s risking to lay a trap for someone who’s counting dividends before they hatch.