The Ivory Grin by Ross Macdonald

The Ivory Grin by Ross Macdonald

Traveling from sleazy motels to stately seaside manors, The Ivory Grin is one of Lew Archer's most violent and macabre cases ever.
A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he's being fed a line, but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts the case. He tracks the wayward maid to a ramshackle motel in a seedy, run-down small town, but finds her dead in her tiny room, with her throat slit from ear to ear. Archer digs deeper into the case and discovers a web of deceit and intrigue, with crazed number-runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls, and a golden-boy shipping heir who's gone mysteriously missing.

Kenneth Millar was Ross Macdonald's real name. Millar was born in 1915 near San Francisco and raised in Ontario, Canada before returning to the United States. In 1944, he wrote his first novel as a young guy. He was president of the Mystery Writers of America and received the Grand Master Award as well as the Gold Dagger Award from the Mystery Writers of Great Britain. In 1983, he passed away.