After finding Geoff in a precarious position with an attractive young lady, she pulled the trigger on husband number two. But it’s not a search for the killer that brings Archy McNally to the case the lovely Melva Williams readily admits to the crime passionnel. Palm Beach private investigator Archy McNally takes on the murder of a socialite and uncovers a thorn*y tangle of blackmail and deceit, south Florida style. And it proves, once again, that Archy McNally is, as Cosmopolitan described him, ‘as amusing and rich as Dorothy Sayers’ great creation, Lord Peter Wimsey.’ Lawrence Sanders’s latest Palm Beach thriller fairly sizzles with greed, glitz, gals, and gore. Fighting his way through copious deaths and fiendish scams, Archy pieces together elements of a strange and grisly puzzle, including: a sealed letter containing a horrifying secret a nude dancer who knows more than she reveals a missing portrait someone would kill for and a butterfly tattoo in a very private place, which could be the key to the murder spree. But when the artist for whom she posed is killed, McNally’s job takes on a decidedly dangerous turn, and he begins to suspect the demure damsel might be both a poser and a poseur. Hired by a formidable matron to investigate the shadowy bona fides of her bubble headed son’s beloved, Archy is wowed by the enigmatic innamorata’s purity and pulchritude. If larceny is good for the soul, Palm Beach must be confidence heaven so discovers Lawrence Sanders’s sleuth about town Archy McNally in his third boffo baffler, McNally’s Risk. The unbeatable master of suspense returns, in a wickedly wayward case of artists, models, and murder. Intricate, unguessable, and sensual as a sultry Florida afternoon, McNally’s Luck is blue chip Lawrence Sanders. As he fits the many pieces of the puzzle into a single, lurid truth, Archy crosses paths with mediums, murderers, impostors and adulterers and learns at an eerie seance that there are scandals even death can’t hide. On the heels of the catnapping, a prominent woman is brutally murdered, and in some cryptic way, the acts are linked. But even he is shocked by the Pandora’s box of lust and larceny slowly opening before him.

As investigator for his father’s prestigious law firm, McNally regularly sees a side of elegant Palm Beach that’s best described as seamy. McNally’s Luck begins as a search for a purloined pet but quickly becomes far more lethal. Now diehard playboy Archy McNally is back, in a kinky caper the likes of which south Florida’s elite has never seen.

With McNally’s Secret, Sanders fans were introduced to a south Florida sleuth whose high spirits and nose for clues endeared him to readers. Just when you thought you knew all the dirt about Palm Beach…Īrchy McNally returns to confront glitz, ghosts and gore in McNally’s Luck, Lawrence Sanders’s masterful new thriller.

Archy mcnally series in order