Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters (USA 2007)

From the Publisher:
"Most mystery writers merely write about crime. Ross Macdonald writes about sin." -- The Atlantic Monthly
Hired by Carl Hallman, the desperate-eyed junkie scion of an obscenely wealthy political dynasty, detective Lew Archer investigates the suspicious deaths of his parents, Senator Hallman and his wife Alicia. Arriving in the sleepy town of Purissima, Archer discovers that orange groves may be where the Hallmans made their mint, but they've has been investing heavily in political intimidation and police brutality to shore up their rancid wealth. However, after years of dastardly double-crossing and low down dirty-dealing, the family seem to be on the receiving end of a karmic death-blow. With two dead already and another consigned to the nuthouse, Archer races to crack the secret before another Hallman lands on the slab.

Murder, madness and greed grace The Doomsters, where a tony façade masks the rot and corruption within.

"Ross Macdonald should not be limited in audience to connoisseurs of mystery fiction. He is one of a handful of writers in the genre whose worth and quality surpass the limitations of the form." -- Los Angeles Times
"Ross Macdonald is one of the best writers of the whipcord thriller." -- The Bookman

Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters. A Lew Archer Novel. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 0307279049 (December, 2007), 251 p., $12.95.

Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters (USA 1983)

From the Publisher:
THE DOOMSTERS
The illustrious and obscenely wealthy Senator Hallman and his large family have had a run of bad luck, first the mother mysteriously croaks. The Senator is the next to greet the Reaper, then one son is stashed away in the nut-house for keeps. And that's only the beginning. Maybe old lady Hallman was right when she said there were fates ganging up on the family -- "Doomsters" she called them. But Lew Archer thinks their misfortunes emanate from a more human source -- a certain crazed someone who won't quit until he runs out of Hallmans to kill.

ROSS MACDONALD
Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, Ross Macdonald is acknowledged around the world as one of the greatest mystery writers of our time. The New York Times has called his books featuring private investigator Lew Archer "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American".

Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters. A Lew Archer Novel. Bantam Books, ISBN: 0553235923 (October, 1983), 177 p., $2.95.

Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters (USA 1973)

From the Publisher:
LEGACY OF DEATH
Purissima was a little town pretty as a postcard. But the message it had for Lew Archer was written in blood with a black border around it. There was a lot of death in the town's richest and most powerful family. And there was also a lot of guilt. Archer was in the middle and it all added up to murder. He figured the killer to be someone close to the family. There were plenty of suspects with plenty of motives but it was hard to be sure -- they were all doomsters bent on their own destruction.

THE DOOMSTERS

Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters. A Lew Archer Novel. New York: Bantam, 1973, Bantam Books #N7266, 177 p., ¢95.

Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters (UK 1971)

From the Publisher:
Lew Archer
"by a long chalk, the best private eye in the business" Sunday Times
The long sleep...
I gestured with the gun in my hand. "This is it," I said. "Pick up the telephone and call the police."
He lifted the receiver and started to dial. I should have distrusted his hang-dog look.
He kicked sidewards and upset the gasoline can. Its contents spouted across the carpet, across my feet.
"I wouldn't use that gun," he said. "You'd be setting off a bomb."
I struck at his head with the automatic. He was a milli-second ahead of me. Something came down like a sledgehammer on top of my head. I got the message. Over and out.

Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters. London: Fontana, 1971, Fontana Books #2734, 191 p., 25p.

John Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters (UK 1958)

From the Publisher:
When Archer opened the door to the tall young man who was afraid of the light, he was letting the Doomsters in.
Who were the Doomsters? Carl certainly knew them -- that was why Archer found him on the doorstep in a bad state of exhaustion and desperately in need of help. Zinnie knew them, though you wouldn't expect her to be haunted by memories or conscience; Zinnie was pseudo-Hollywood, expensive and not very new, but a nice machine for all that. Mildred certainly knew them and that was more understandable, with her grave innocence and the loneliness that made her seem vulnerable. And Dr. Grantland had his fill of them -- he was a good doctor suffering from a bad case of lack of integrity. There was the red-headed woman, too, who drank time under the table; she knew them. But Archer didn't, until he got talked into helping Carl, and found himself always a lap behind the next murder.

It is two years since Macdonald produced his last thriller; the time has been well spent-this one is vintage stuff.

John Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters. A Crime Connoisseur Book. London: Cassell, 1958, 225 p., 12'6.

John Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters (USA 1958)

From the Publisher:
When Archer opened the door to the tall young man who was afraid of the light, he was letting the Doomsters in.

Who were the Doomsters?

The red-headed woman who drank time under the table knew them...
So did the aging juvenile delinquent who used drugs to dull a nightmare memory...
So did Carl, who was running away from a certain place and a certain thing -- and who might have found his way back if only he could have caught himself on the downbeat...
And Zinnie, poison-Hollywood, probably empty, certainly expensive, and not new, but a nice machine for all that...
Mildred certainly knew them -- Mildred with the intense grave innocence of a serious child, and the loneliness that made her seem vulnerable...And Dr. Grantham, the good doctor with the bad case of lack of integrity...

Lew Archer came to see them as monsters with human faces. Perhaps one of them was the golden man for whom murder was done four times.

Ross Macdonald's fine new novel grapples with some of the darkest forces in modern life. It may subvert (if you ever had it) that old black-and-white picture of a world in which there are only good people and bad ones.

ROSS MACDONALD
-- i.e., Kenneth Millar -- was born in California in 1915 of Canadian-American ancestry. He was educated in Canada, and in 1938 married a Canadian girl who is now well known as a novelist under her married name, Margaret Millar. After several years of high-school teaching, he was given a fellowship at the University of Michigan and took his doctorate there with a study of Coleridge's psychology. He entered the Navy in 1944 and served as a communications officer on an escort carrier. For some years he has been writing mystery novels under the name John Ross Macdonald, but in 1956, for fear of possible confusion with John D. MacDonald, changed his pen name to Ross Macdonald. The Doomsters is his thirteenth published book.

John Ross Macdonald: The Doomsters. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958, 251 p., $2.95.