From the mid-1940s to the early 1980s, MacDonald was one of the most dependable of the writers of American private eye crime stories.
Traversing both the mean streets and the sunlit thoroughfares of LA, his detective, Lew Archer, pushed his meddling nose into many a beehive of depravity and maleficence, sometimes getting it stung but always coming back for more. Lighter in tone and less cerebral than Chandler, MacDonald and his protagonist seldom failed to deliver.
There are three novels in this omnibus edition - The Ivory Grin, The Galton Case and The Blue Hammer - and they provide a fair sampling of this author's work.