Ross MacDonald's unforgettable detective is Lew Archer. The wearily wise, infintely resourceful private investigator who so often finds in the tangled past, with its lonog-buried guilty secrets, a fertile source of clues to the murderous present. Archer, whose very humanity puts him constantly in jeopardy, is "a distinguished creation," Endora Welty has said, "an attractive figure...He is of today, one of ours." He is his incomparable best in the three splendid novels of suspense brought together here: "The Doomsters," "The Zebra-Striped Hearse" and "The Instant Enemy."
