A sun-drenched California town. A beautiful young woman who has jilted her fiance to take up with a mysterious Frenchman. A poor little rich boy who wants her back. Enter private detective Lew Archer to investigate an entangled web of crime.
When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on the suspiciously suave Frenchman who's run off with his client's girlfriend, it looks like a simple case of alienated affections. Things look different when the mysterious foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts. Black Money is Ross Macdonald at his finest, baring the skull beneath the untanned skin of Southern California's high society.