Lawrence Sanders – författare

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Palm Beach private investigator Archy McNally takes on the murder of a socialite and uncovers a thorny tangle of blackmail and deceit, south Florida style.Playboy Geoffrey Williams is dead. 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. After finding Geoff in a precarious position with an attractive young lady, she pulled the trigger on husband number two. It sounds like an open-and-shut case for McNally & Sons'' Department of Discreet Inquiries until Melva asks Archy to shield her daughter, Veronica, from the press and paparazzi. Gallant Archy takes the case -- and escorts grown-up and gorgeous Veronica home to the McNally manse. Rumors fly, and some of them may be true.Veronica is no damsel in distress though, and she''s certainly not sorry her stepfather is in the grave. When her story doesn''t match Melva''s, which doesn''t match Geoff''s, Archy realizes he does indeed have a dilemma on his hands. Someone''s lying, and the one person who knows the truth -- Geoff''s perky playmate -- has gotten away.A delectable combination of high society and high jinks, and featuring some of the most eccentric characters to populate Florida''s Gold Coast, McNally''s Dilemma is as witty and charming as Archy McNally himself.

A Murderous Maze of Sun-Drenched Scandal When elegant, drop-dead gorgeous Theodosia Johnson steps ashore in Palm Beach, even the most jaded roving eyes stop to notice. Sophisticated champagne heir Chauncy Wilson Sackville-Hersforth is equally enchanted by this mysterious beauty, but when he proposes marriage to her, Chauncy''s mother isn''t nearly so impressed. Archy McNally, the brilliant, blithe-spirited hero of McNally''s Luck and McNally''s Secret returns to unravel the puzzle surrounding Miss Johnson. However, he too falls under her romantic spell...and bodies begin to appear like uninvited guests at a poolside dinner party. Shocking, swank, and more fun than a weekend in Palm beach, McNally''s Risk is full of sure-fire suspense that only Lawrence Sanders can deliver.

The engaging new mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of McNally''s Caper!Death is an ugly business.As an investigator for his father''s Palm Beach law firm, Archy McNally has discreetly handled scores of unusual cases for the firm''s upscale clientele. But when Sunny Fogarty, the attractive comptroller for Whitcomb Funeral Homes, approaches McNally & Son to investigate an unexplained rise in her company''s fortunes, Archy soon finds himself conducting a most peculiar investigation.It seems that an inordinate amount of the dead bodies handled by the Whitcomb homes are being shipped north for burial. As Archy searches for an explanation, he is sucked into the Whitcomb family''s internal power struggles while his relationship with Sunny takes on new steamy dimensions. Confronted on all sides by characters with questionable motives, Archy smells a connection to the seedy side of Palm Beach society, and he must unravel the mystery before the pile of corpses grows any higher.With a colorful cast of characters and scintillating plot twists, McNally''s Trial is another rollicking ride from the master of suspense.

The dowager duchess of Palm Beach dies, leaving behind a fabulous fortune and a handsome young heir -- and Archy McNally is left trying to figure out who''s who. When a young waiter working Malcolm "Nifty" MacNiff''s annual Tennis Everyone! benefit is found dead in Nifty''s otherwise pristine swimming pool, it''s Archy McNally, south Florida''s most famous Discreet Inquirer, who rushes in to salvage the town''s reputation and solve the unfortunate crime. Palm Beach is already in a tizzy over the arrival of its newest millionaire, Lance Talbot, just in from Switzerland to claim his inheritance after the demise of his grandmother. Poor Jeff Rodgers has barely been pulled from the water when Palm Beach''s rumor mill goes into overdrive. Why has Dennis Darling, crack reporter for Bare Facts magazine, descended on the fair island? Just how did handsome Lance escape that avalanche that took his mother''s life, and brought him back to his Florida family? And just who is the alluring Baroness Holga von Brecht, the well-preserved woman on Lance''s arm whose ageless features have Palm Beach matrons lusting after her beauty secrets? When an old school chum of Holga''s is made redundant, Archy works overtime to snare a double murderer.

What happens when the U.S. Army wants a drug to enhance the performance of soldiers in combat? Gregory Barrow is assigned by McWhortle Laboratory to create the ZAP pill - a formula to increase the human body''s testosterone level. But the mild mannered chemist doesn''t realize the danger, or the black-market value, of his research. Marleen Todd, Barrow''s neighbor and co-worker, is on a much different mission - to create a new hormone-influenced fragrance that will revolutionize the perfume industry, moving beyond attraction to emotional effects. As Barrow and Todd delve deeper into their work, they discover frightening side effects that could result in either the destruction or salvation of their already fragile family lives. And as a plot to steal the ZAP formula builds, the lives of everyone involved become intertwined as they seek to enhance their private pleasures.

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Guilty Pleasures is a hilarious collection of 21 essays recounting the irresistibility of (among others): o Therapy and Antidepressantso Milking Parents for Casho Marrying Moneyo How to Prepare for and Secure the Perfect Daytime Napo TVo Having AffairsEight Midwestern women also satirize their on-and-off addictions to food, eBay, toenail polish, gossiping, buying beads, and baby talk. Take their obsession with stockpiling toenail polish, for example: Tart, natural, rose cellophane. Shake gently . . . Sheer honey, gun metal, fresco. The thing to do at midnight . . . Sri desert frost, peach melba. Glob and dab the wand, stroke lavishly, smoothly . . . Blue lagoon, lilac mood, passion flower. Read something. Watch bad TV. Crème, enamel, high gloss, french. When dry, cover with white gym socks. Go forth.The authors unlocked the vault to expose what women everywhere really like to do. In writing Guilty Pleasures, these "otherwise good girls" uncovered a global secret sisterhood who enjoy pampering themselves in intensely personal delights.

First in the series starring the sleuthing Palm Beach playboy from the #1 New York Times–bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author.  Inveterate playboy Archy McNally gets paid to make discreet inquiries for Palm Beach’s power elite. But keeping their dirty little secrets buried will take some fancy footwork in McNally’s latest case. A block of priceless 1918 US airmail stamps has gone missing from a high-society matron’s wall safe. Lady Cynthia Horowitz, now on her sixth husband, is a nasty piece of work who lives in a mansion that looks like Gone With the Wind’s Tara transplanted to southern Florida. McNally’s search takes him into a thickening maze of sex, lies, scandal, and blackmail. When passion erupts into murder and McNally must dig even deeper to uncover the truth, he unearths a shocking secret that could expose his own family’s skeletons.   

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author: Florida PI Archy McNally takes on a deceptively simply case of pet abduction, where bad luck can be deadly.  Archy McNally enjoys sipping late-night port with his girlfriend of the moment and tooling across southern Florida in his red Miata sports car. In his off hours, he works as a part-time investigator for his father’s venerable law firm. His latest assignment? Solve a simple catnapping. But, as McNally knows, things are rarely as simple as they seem. Soon, the case of the missing Peaches, a foul-tempered, overweight Persian, morphs into the murder of a prominent Palm Beach woman. Uncovering a chilling connection between the two cases sends McNally into a psychological game of cat and mouse. As he lays a trap that could be catnip for the killer, he is faced with the reality that felines may have nine lives but he has only one.  

A seductive socialite entangles a Palm Beach sleuth in a viper’s nest of lust and larceny in this New York Times bestseller.  Checking out the background of a wealthy client’s prospective daughter-in-law should be easy money for Palm Beach private investigator Archy McNally—until people around gorgeous socialite Theodosia Johnson start being killed off at an alarming rate. The first to die is Theodosia’s portrait painter, who gets his throat slashed. Next, a blackmailing stripper ends up with a bullet in her head. McNally must expose the killer, but it’s Theodosia, herself, who turns out to be the biggest mystery of all. When she sets out to seduce McNally, he isn’t sure whether he’s being played, so he orchestrates his own scam to uncover the truth. If his scheme backfires, it could cost the dapper detective his livelihood—and his life.  

The Palm Beach sleuth tries to find a thief—and a killer—among a rich, eccentric family, in this New York Times bestseller. Archy McNally, the parttime investigator and fulltime bon vivant,takes on the curious case of a thief with exquisite taste within the eccentric Forsythe family. Griswold Forsythe II wants to know which greedy, conniving relative is making off with the family treasures, including an original Picasso and an irreplaceable Edgar Allan Poe first edition. Suspects abound, including the sexy Forsythe women who all seem to find McNally irresistible. But things take a nasty turn when Griswold is murdered. Who wanted to off the family patriarch—and why? Inside the lavish, baronial estate, McNally’s uncovering some pretty damning dirt, including illegitimate offspring and a resident ghost. As things heat up, McNally had better watch his back—or he, himself, could end up six feet under.  

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author: Palm Beach sleuth Archy McNally’s feathers are ruffled when a bird store owner is killed.  Hiram Gottschalk, owner of the Palm Beach shop Parrots Unlimited, fears for his life. First, he finds a photo of himself and his deceased wife slashed to ribbons; then, a Mass card with his name on it is taped inside of his closet door; now, someone has wrung the neck of his beloved pet bird. In desperation, he turns to McNally & Son for a private investigation. McNally meets with Gottschalk, along with his client’s cursing parrot. McNally wisely ignores the bird’s command to go to hell, but he can’t ignore the fallout when his client is stabbed in his sleep and Gottschalk’s unstable son, Peter, becomes the prime suspect. When more victims turn up, McNally has to puzzle out the motives of a murderer who has just killed two more birds with one stone . . . and is now targeting the dapper detective. 

Is a Florida widow being conned out of a fortune? The debonair detective tries to find out in this novel in the #1 New York Times–bestselling series.   At first, Archy McNally was unofficially enlisted to verify the bona fides of a deal for a rare Fabergé Imperial egg, created exclusively for the doomed Czar Nicholas in 1917. But when Edythe Westmore’s son and daughter become convinced the trinket is a fake and their mother is being conned, McNally is asked to deep-six the whole deal. He gets more than he bargained for when Natalie Westmore and her brother’s wife, Helen, both try to seduce him. The Palm Beach detective will need to employ some fancy footwork as he reveals a mess of lust, greed, and murder that smells worse than a rotten egg. Now it’s his own neck McNally’s risking to lay a trap for someone who’s counting dividends before they hatch. 

New York Times bestseller: A mystery “full of twists and turns” set among the elite society of Palm Beach (Library Journal).   The Palm Beach tennis season starts off with a bang when a pro is shot by his wife after she catches him with another woman. For Archy McNally, private investigator to the rich and infamous, the case seems open and shut. The killer, twice-married socialite Melva Williams, confesses to offing her cheating spouse in a moment of passion. Now she wants McNally to do her a favor: Keep the paparazzi away from her daughter, Veronica. Playing babysitter to the beautiful Veronica and remaining faithful to his fiancée prove beyond McNally’s capabilities. Before he can sort out his private life, blackmail enters the picture. As McNally attempts to find the truth amidst all the lies, his investigation must include a look into the past—and a tragedy that the world will never forget. 

When the husband of an actress sips a poisoned potable, Lawrence Sanders’s beloved Palm Beach PI must stage an investigation from his director’s chair.  One of the most celebrated stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Desdemona Darling, has come South for the season. She makes headlines when she agrees to star in the Palm Beach Community Theater’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Archy McNally somehow gets roped into directing—and into discreetly investigating who could be blackmailing his star. Life tragically imitates art when Richard Holmes—Darling’s Husband Number Seven—sips some elderberry wine laced with arsenic at the cast party. Holmes was a self-made millionaire with a genius for betting on pork bellies. But who’d want him dead? As McNally tries to smoke out the culprit, he wonders if he’s getting too close to a remorseless killer who’s about to drop the curtain on another victim.  

Lawrence Sanders’s beloved sleuth Archy McNally returns in a novel by Vincent LardoTruth is stranger than fiction in Archy McNally’s latest case, proving there’s no bond stronger than blood—except the bonds of a deadly secretBestselling author Sabrina Wright wants dapper detective Archy McNally to find her husband, who vanished while looking for her MIA daughter—it may seem like a simple case, but McNally knows it’s never that easy. Thirty-year-old Gillian Wright ran off to find her birth father, opening a Pandora’s box of scandalous revelations the tabloids can’t resist. It seems that Sabrina’s life was a bigger fiction than her bodice-ripping romances. Before her story is over, three powerful men with damning secrets could be outed . . . and murder will be the denouement. As McNally stumbles on one cover-up after another, he has one last chance to catch a killer who will stop at nothing to protect his name. 

Murder puts Lawrence Sanders’s Palm Beach PI in the prime suspect spotlight in the series “effortlessly written to be effortlessly enjoyed” (The Boston Globe). Hired to retrieve a client’s kiss-and-tell-all diary from her blackmailing ex-lover, Archy McNally doesn’t expect the mission to go awry. He makes the exchange easily enough, but as the Palm Beach private investigator returns to his sports car, he’s knocked out cold. When he wakes up, the diary is gone. Except it wasn’t a diary McNally was playing go-between to collect. It was the Holy Grail of lost literature—the original manuscript of Truman Capote’sAnswered Prayers. McNally will need some divine intervention of his own when he becomes the prime suspect in a homicide investigation headed by vampy, green-eyed blonde Georgia O’Hara. With everyone trying to seize the Capote opus, it’s up to McNally to write off a killer who’s waiting to close the book on him—permanently.  

If anyone can connect a dead waiter in a pool, a deceased duchess, and a possibly phony heir, it’s the Palm Beach PI—in this New York Times bestseller.  Malcolm MacNiff’s annual Tennis Everyone!fundraiser is the high point of the Palm Beach season. But the glittering A-list event hits rock bottom when a waiter is found floating face down in the pool.  Archy McNally instantly suspects foul play. No sooner are his fears confirmed than he has another mystery to solve. Society’s abuzz over the recent arrival of Lance Talbot from Switzerland to claim his half-billion inheritance from his grandmother’s estate, but some claim that Talbot’s a fraud. It falls to McNally to sift through the clues and uncover a murderous scam that stretches from the snowy Alps all the way to sunny Florida.  

The final book in the New York Times–bestselling series is “a wacky, waggish whodunit,” as the Palm Beach PI investigates a dead end in a maze (Publishers Weekly). The night Palm Beach society has been eagerly awaiting has finally arrived. Matthew Hayes, once the human cannonball in a traveling carnival and now a retired millionaire, is unveiling his Amazin’ Maze, styled after the historic hedge maze at England’s Hampton Court Palace. But even this wonder is upstaged by Hayes’s wife—when she’s found dead in the center of the labyrinth. Marvelous Marlena Marvel, a sideshow wonder of amazing pulchritude, was a devotee of the black arts. But the motive for her murder is as murky as her mystical talents . . . especially when Archy McNally uncovers a link to another homicide. It’s a crime scene straight out of Barnum & Bailey as McNally employs his own sleight-of-hand to catch a killer about to pull off the greatest vanishing act of all. 

The #1 New York Times–bestselling author introduces readers to “a great detective, a detective’s detective,” New York cop Edward X. Delaney (Kirkus Reviews). New York Police Department Captain Edward Delaney is called to the scene of a brutal murder. A Brooklyn councilman was struck from behind, the back of his skull punctured and crushed with an unknown weapon. The victim wasn’t robbed, and there’s no known motive. The commissioner appoints Delaney to head up a clandestine task force, but soon this effort ignites an internecine war of departmental backstabbing.   Distracted by the serious illness of his wife, Barbara, Delaney begins his secret investigation. Then the killer claims another victim—slain in the exact same way, leaving the strange puncture wound. As more young men are found murdered, Delaney starts putting the pieces together. Soon, he’s faced with a cop’s dilemma: He knows who the killer is, but the man is untouchable. That’s when Delaney lays a trap to bring a monster to justice . . .

A taut and gripping tale that sets police detective Edward Delaney on the trail of a vicious criminal in New York’s art worldA month ago, world-renowned artist Victor Maitland was found dead in his Mott Street studio—stabbed repeatedly in the back. With no clear leads or suspects, the New York Police Department calls Chief Edward Delaney out of retirement. Delaney is still adjusting to life on the outside, and he’s bored by his free time. He welcomes the chance to put his well-honed investigative skills to the test once again. To investigate the case, Delaney plunges into Maitland’s rarefied orbit. Following a winding path of avarice, deception, and fraud, Delaney uncovers a long line of suspects that includes Maitland’s wife, son, and mistress. When a second murder rocks Manhattan’s art world, Delaney moves closer to the truth about what kind of a man—or monster—Victor Maitland really was. But which of the artist’s enemies was capable of killing him and leaving no trail?

New York Times Bestseller: A retired cop hunts for a female serial killer no one would suspect in this “first-rate thriller . . . as good as you can get” (The New York Times). By day, she’s a middle-aged secretary no one would look at twice. But by night, dressed in a midnight-black wig, a skin-tight dress, and spike heels, she’s hard to miss. Inside her leather shoulder bag are keys, cash, mace, and a Swiss Army knife. She prowls smoky hotel bars for prey. The first victim—a convention guest at an upscale Manhattan hotel—is found with multiple stab wounds to the neck and genitals. By the time retired police detective chief Edward Delaney hears about the case from an old colleague, the Hotel Ripper has already struck twice. Unable to resist the puzzle, Delaney follows the clues and soon realizes he’s looking for a woman. As the grisly slayings continue, seizing the city in a chokehold of panic, Delaney must stop the madwoman before she kills again.

When a Manhattan psychiatrist is murdered, a retired detective returns to the job, in a thriller by the #1 New York Times–bestselling “master of suspense” (The Washington Post). On a rainy November night, Dr. Simon Ellerbee stares out the window of his Upper East Side psychiatry office, miserably wishing he could seek counseling for the problems in his seemingly perfect life. He hears the door buzzer and goes to answer it, but flinches when he sees his unexpected guest. Minutes later, he’s dead, his skull crushed by repeated blows from a ball-peen hammer. Once the doctor was down, the killer turned over the body and smashed in Ellerbee’s eyes.  With no leads and a case getting colder by the hour, the New York Police Department calls in former chief Edward Delaney. His search for the truth raises more questions than answers: Who had Ellerbee let into his office? Why were there two sets of wet footprints on the carpeting of the doctor’s townhouse? What caused Ellerbee’s odd personality transformation over the past year? And who murdered, then symbolically mutilated, the prominent Manhattan psychiatrist?

A New York Times–bestselling thriller of medicine and murder by an Edgar Award–winning legend of suspense. The Bingham Foundation is one of the most important scientific charities in the country, giving grants that can make or break a researcher’s career. When they get a proposal that seems too good to be true, they send hardened investigator Samuel Todd to confirm that the science holds up. A cynical detective with a sixth sense for deception and a bad habit of committing adultery, Todd has never met a liar he couldn’t crack. But he’s never met anyone like T. G. Thorndecker.   Thorndecker won the Nobel Prize in his thirties, and his work continues to push the outer limits of modern technology. After years of secret research, he claims to have made a breakthrough in the war against aging. When he requests a million-dollar grant from the Bingham Foundation, Todd goes to find out if he’s on the level. As he digs into the demise of Thorndecker’s first wife and late-night happenings in the lab, Todd comes face to face with a medical mystery that blurs the line between life and death.   The author of the bestselling Edward X. Delaney series, called “a master of suspense” by the Washington Post, was one of the most popular thriller authors of the twentieth century. The Sixth Commandment shows that his work remains as irresistibly exciting as ever.  

Lawrence Sanders concludes his bestselling Commandment series with a sizzling tale of hot-blooded lust and stone-cold murder Nothing gets by Dora Conti. Her latest case brings the tough-as-nails claims adjuster to the mean streets of New York, where Lewis Starrett, a wealthy society jeweler, has been fatally stabbed. Though the killer was apparently an amateur, there was a lot of power behind the knife’s thrust. The victim lived in an eighteen-room duplex on Fifth Avenue with his wife, daughter, son, and daughter-in-law. Conti must look into the lives of this privileged clan before deciding whether to pay out Lewis Starrett’s life insurance policy. As it turns out, their family affairs are a seething viper’s nest of lust, adultery, and escalating violence. The body count rises—along with Conti’s growing desire for burnt-out cop John Wenden.

“Thou shalt not steal is indeed the moral in this light-as-a-bubble comic caper” by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author (People). Appraising rare coins for Grandby & Sons, a venerable Madison Avenue auction house, is a dream come true for Mary Lou Bateson. She even gets a chance to inspect the Havistock Collection of priceless coins, which includes the Demaretion, a rare, ancient Greek silver piece. But when the Demaretion disappears just after her assessment, the young numismatist becomes the number-one suspect. Placed on indefinite leave, Bateson enlists the help of a New York Police Department cop and an insurance detective to go behind the closed doors of one of New York’s most powerful and untouchable families. The Havistocks are keeping some dangerous secrets, including a kleptomaniac daughter, a sex-addicted daughter-in-law, and a sleazy nest of adultery, pornography, and damning secrets someone is willing to kill to keep.

The #1New York Times–bestselling author proves that he is indeed “a master of suspense” in this thriller of a covetous clergyman (The Washington Post). Joshua Bigg, an investigator for a Manhattan law firm, usually spends his days tracking down witnesses and verifying clients’ alibis. Ironically, Bigg is quite short, and uses his boyish looks to coax information from his targets. The newly promoted agent gets the chance to show his mettle when he probes the disappearance of one client and the suspicious suicide of another.   Professor Yale Stonehouse left his apartment one night, without saying anything to his wife, and never returned. Sol Kipper plunged to his death from the top floor of his Upper East Side townhouse. With little to go on, Bigg enlists the help of a cop, and uncovers a shocking connection between the two cases: a corrupt clergyman who preys on the lonely and bereaved. Desperate to stop the stone-cold killer who uses religion to mete out his own brand of justice, Bigg has to prove that no one is above God—or the law.

The explosive Edgar Award–winning debut novel—told entirely through surveillance recordings, eyewitness reports, and other “official” documents—by New York Times bestselling author Lawrence SandersNew York City. Summer 1968.Newly sprung from prison, professional burglar John Anderson is preparing for the biggest heist of his criminal career. The mark is a Manhattan luxury apartment building with the tony address of 535 East Seventy-Third Street. Enlisting a crew of scouts, con artists, and a getaway driver, Anderson orchestrates what he believes to be a foolproof plan. To pull off the big score, he needs one last thing: the permission of the local mafia, who expect a piece of the action.  But no one inside Anderson’s operation knows that the police have recorded their conversations. The New York Police Department has hatched a plot of its own—but even its task force may not be enough to stop such a cunningly planned robbery.