Lady in the Lake

'I want you to find my wife,' he said. 'She's been missing for a month.' 'Okay,' I said. 'I'll find your wife.' Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a quickie divorce and marry a Casanova-wannabe named Chris Lavery. Or so the note she left her husband insisted. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it he denies everything and sends the private investigator packing with a flea lodged firmly in his ear.

But when Marlowe next encounters Lavery, he's denying nothing - on account of the two bullet holes in his heart. Now Marlowe's on the trail of a killer, who leads him out of smoggy LA all the way to a murky mountain lake . . . 'Chandler's best novels carry the crime story to levels of artistry that have rarely been matched' Daily Mail 'Brilliant . . . the story travels at exhilarating speed' The Times