Celebrated private eye Lew Archer is hired by a father intent on preventing the marriage of his daughter to a penniless and possibly murderous artist. The chase takes Archer from Mexico to Lake Tahoe and from the San Francisco Bay area to Los Angeles as more than one murder crowds the investigation.
The once popular Barcelona Hotel is now boarded up. Starlets and Navy boys once rubbed shoulders there with tycoons and hustlers. Lewis Archer knows that twenty years ago a handful of dreamers and losers came together in the Barcelona. The question now is what kind of deal went down there, and why were a mixed-up rich kid and a beautiful blonde the first to pay the price?
As a mysterious fire rages through the hills above a privileged town in Southern California, Lew Archer tracks a missing child who may be the pawn in a marital struggle or the victim of a bizarre kidnapping. What he uncovers amid the ashes is murder and a trail of motives as combustible as gasoline.
The facts pound hard and cold in Lew Archer's mind: a woman who means something to him is missing, a man has bled to death beneath a magnolia tree, and a killer is on the loose. The facts are falling into place, but he doesn't have to like them.
