Traveling from sleazy motels to stately seaside manors, The Ivory Grin
is one of Lew Archer's most violent and macabre cases ever.
A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds
hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has
stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he's being fed a line, but curiosity
gets the better of him and he accepts the case. He tracks the wayward
maid to a ramshackle motel in a seedy, run-down small town, but finds
her dead in her tiny room, with her throat slit from ear to ear. Archer
digs deeper into the case and discovers a web of deceit and intrigue,
with crazed number-runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls,
and a golden-boy shipping heir who's gone mysteriously missing.