Ross Macdonald: The Chill (UK 2012)

From the Publisher:
Private detective Lew Archer has better things to do than take on an investigation for Alex Kincaid, a young man claiming that his new bride, Dolly, has gone missing. Snapped by a hotel photographer on the day of their wedding, the beautiful girl vanished only hours after and Alex has heard nothing since. But when Archer begins digging, he finds evidence that links Dolly to brutal murders that span two decades, and a terrible secret.

In this byzantine and compelling tale, Ross Macdonald explores the darkest experiences that can bind a family together - and tear it apart.

Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer mysteries rewrote the conventions of the detective novel with their credible, humane hero, and with Macdonald's insight and moral complexity won new literary respectability for the hardboiled genre previously pioneered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. They have also received praise from such celebrated writers as William Goldman, Jonathan Kellerman, Eudora Welty and Elmore Leonard.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill. Penguin, ISBN: 9780141196619 (July, 2012), 352 p., £8.99, eBook £5.50.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill (USA 1996)

From the Publisher:
In The Chill a distraught young man hires Archer to track down his runaway bride. But no sooner has he found Dolly Kincaid than Archer finds himself entangled in two murders, one twenty years old, the other so recent that the blood is still wet. What ensues is a detective novel of nerve-racking suspense, desperately believable characters, and one of the most intricate plots ever spun by an American crime writer.

"Lew Archer... is a crime-fighter of the-old school; painstakingly searching ouf the twisting thread of suspense that leads him from the hint of one complicated drama to another." -- Christian Science Monitor

"If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer Macdonald redefined the private eye as a rowing conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill. A Lew Archer Novel. Vintage Books, ISBN: 0679768076 (May, 1996), 279 p., $11.00.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
THE CHILL
Archer walked out on the blonde. Then they found her body in a sticky pool of blood. The case had started as a search for a missing bride; along the way Archer had run into a rich woman with a hold on her son, some college types who should have known better but didn't, and the loose ends of a nasty ten-year-old murder and cover-up. But it wasn't until they took the lady's suntanned body down from the California hills that Archer knew he had all the right pieces to a very messy puzzle, and a debt to pay...

ROSS MACDONALD
"[The] American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald." -- New York Times Book Review

A SELECTION OF THE MYSTERIOUS 800K CLUB

Ross Macdonald: The Chill. A Lew Archer Novel. Warner Books, ISBN: 0446358878 (July, 1990), 230 p., $3.95.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill (UK 1987)

From the Publisher:
Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award
Alex Kincaid is an edgy, quick-tempered, desperate-looking young man. But then, to Archer's mind, he has good reason to be. His beautiful bride, Dolly McGee, has mysteriously vanished from their honeymoon suite leaving Kincaid more than a little worried for her safety and her sanity. So Archer agrees to take on the case and almost immediately wishes he hadn't, because what he finds would put the chill on anybody - evidence linking Dolly to a series of murders leading from California halfway back across America to another time and another place.

"Without in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either of them" - Anthony Boucher, New York Times Book Review

"The finest detective novels ever written by an American" - William Goldman, New York Times Book Review
"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" - Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

The Lew Archer novels "are marvellous books" - Time Out

Ross Macdonald was born near San Francisco in 1915. He grew up in Canada, travelled widely in Europe, but lived for most of his writing life in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife, the Canadian novelist Margaret Millar. He died in 1983.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill. A Lew Archer Novel. Allison & Busby American Crime, ISBN: 0850317134 (January, 1987), 240 p., £3.50.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill (USA 1983)

From the Publisher:
THE CHILL
Archer knew he shouldn't have taken the case, but Alex Kincaid seemed so desperate. Kincaid's loving new bride Dolly had just inexplicably walked out on him, leaving Kincaid more than a little fearful for her sanity-and her safety. So Archer reluctantly agreed to help Kincaid find his wife. But what he found instead was enough to send a chill down anyone's spine -- a fresh new corpse and evidence linking Dolly not only to this murder, but to a series of others dating back to before she was even born.

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 Chill. A Lew Archer Novel. Bantam Books, ISBN: 0553226754 (February, 1983), 216 p., $2.50.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill (USA 1970)

From the Publisher:
BLOOD WEDDING
A beautiful, half-mad bride desperately running from her husband -- a trail of murder that leads halfway across America and twenty years back into the past -- an iron-willed matriarch -- an amorous French instructress -- a Las Vegas blackmailer -- a strange voice from the past screaming: "I'm going to kill you."

THE CHILL
One of the most baffling, brilliant, shocking thrillers written by the author of THE GOODBYE LOOK.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill. A Lew Archer Novel. Bantam Books S4430 (June, 1970), 226 p., ¢75.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill (USA 1964)

From the Publisher:
The Chill marks the eleventh appearance of Ross Macdonald's California detective, Lew Archer. Hired to trace a runaway bride, Archer uncovers a trail of murder that leads halfway across America and twenty years into the past. Beyond that, it need only be said that the story is every bit as exciting, baffling, and ultimately satisfying as would be expected from the author of The Zebra-Striped Hearse. In the direct line of succession that reaches from Dashiell Hammett to Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald adds, to the crackling dialogue and narrative tightness of his illustrious predecessors, impressive qualities of his own: a depth of psychological understanding, a sureness in handling a wide variety of social milieus, and a dazzling, unpredictable plot.

All this explains why Mr. Macdonald's novels "even appeal to people who don't ordinarily read mysteries," as Publishers' Weekly says, and why they are gaining an increasing audience among lovers of good fiction.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill. A Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964, 279 p., $3.95.