The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes Quotes

“A few languid clouds moved inland over our heads. A little high plane was gamboling among them like a terrier in a henyard.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“Trying to get information out of a Los Angeles lawyer was like opening a can of sardines without a key.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“Hate is usually a more compelling motive than love,”
― Ross MacDonald, The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator

“dazzling band of sea. Twenty or thirty miles out, a string of brown hunchbacked islands lay on the bright horizon like basking tortoises. The woman looked at the Pacific and its islands as if they belonged to her. I found out later that one of them did.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator

“Smoke if you like. I’ve given it up. It’s so morale-building to have given up one of the vices. Of course I’d never have done it without that cancer scare to help me. Sheer terror can be awfully useful, don’t you think?”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator

“I retreated up the highway to a drive-in where I ate a torpedo sandwich.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator

“I turned on my back and floated”: The Drowning Pool”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator

“They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through the mountains, cut down a thousand years of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn’t touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn’t be tainted. There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator

“She lived in a frame cottage on a hillside overlooking the distant campus. The front yard was choked with a dozen varieties of cactus, some of which speared as high as the roof. The house needed paint and it hung on the slope a little off balance, like its tenant.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“He sat down with great caution, after inspecting the chair for concealed electrodes, and made me the gift of his card.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“Sheriff Ostervelt snapped his black case shut and tucked it under his hamlike arm. He went to Mildred, walking like a bear on its hind legs, and laid a large red paw on her shoulder. "Coming along with me, little girl?"
She shrank at his touch. "I'll ride with Mr. Archer. He brought me here.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“The house belonged to the hashish school of Spanish architecture. Probably early nineteen-twenties and imitation Mizener, which made it the imitation of an imitation which wasn't worth imitating. It was a ponderous monstrosity with thick walls, meager windows, insane turrets. Somebody with a hidalgo complex had tried to jail a dream of happiness. The prisoner had probably died, or lost its mind.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“The flagstone terrace overlooked a golf course. At the bottom of its green slopes lay a dazzling band of sea. Twenty or thirty miles out, a string of brown hunchbacked islands lay on the bright horizon like basking tortoises. The woman looked at the Pacific and its islands as if they belonged to her. I found out later that one of them did.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“She looked up at the sun as if it were spying on her.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“Are you a member?" The question was rhetorical.
"Mrs. Caswell asked me to meet her here."
She underwent a personality change which almost cracked her makeup. "Oh. Excuse me, sir. If you'll sign the register - I believe Ms. Caswell is in the bar.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“He was a man of fifty-five or so wearing an open-necked white shirt from which his head jutted like a weathered statue.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“Nothing happened when I pressed the bellpush. I knocked on the door. Slowly, like twin bodies being dragged, footsteps approached the other side of it.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“Only the blind had not seen Terry Neville.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“The waves came up towards us, fumbling and gnawing at the beach like an immense soft mouth.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Including Newly Discovered Case Notes

“Crimes often come in pairs.”
― Ross MacDonald, The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator