The Way Some People Die

An investigation keeps Lew Archer constantly on the move about Southern California, beginning in Santa Monica, where Mrs. Samuel Lawrence gives Lew Archer 50 dollars for one day of his time to find her missing daughter Galatea (a.k.a. Galley). Archer soon discovers that Galley has married a small-time mobster named Joe Tarantine. Starting the investigation in the most likely place, with Tarantine's brother, Mario, Archer finds the man in hospital after a severe beating. Shortly after that Mr. Dowser, a big-time mobster and drug runner living near Pacific Palisades, offers him a retainer to find Tarantine, who has absconded with property of his. That this was a shipment of heroin stolen from Dowser's agent, Herman Speed, is not revealed until later.

Archer travels to Palm Springs, where Galley was last sighted, and is led to Joe Tarantine's hideout by her admirer Keith Dalling. Though Archer manages to speak to Galley briefly, he is slugged from behind and is found lying by the roadside by Mrs Marjorie Fellows. When he returns to Dalling's apartment, it is to find him shot; then later Tarantine's body is discovered in a motorboat awash on the rocks beyond the fictitious Pacific Point. Following another lead, Archer discovers that Marjorie's husband, "Colonel Henry Fellows", is in fact Herman Speed, who has borrowed $30,000 from her to invest on her behalf. In reality he had used it to buy the stolen heroin from Joe Tarantine, hoping to sell it on at a profit. Archer tracks Speed down in San Francisco and forces him to hand over the drugs, after which Speed commits suicide. Archer then hands the heroin over to Dowser and arranges for the police to raid the house and arrest him immediately afterwards.

When Archer returns to the Pacific Point morgue, he learns that Joe Tarantine had been dead before being placed in his boat and set adrift. Mario suspects that it was Galley who was responsible, using Dalling as an accomplice, and goes after her. Archer discovers her in Dalling's house, where she has shot Mario after he attacked her. She admits to having helped kill Joe and then Dalling and is about to shoot Archer when the badly injured Mario enters the room and she empties the gun into him before he will die. Galley now admits that she had been Speed's hospital nurse after he was shot during the heroin robbery and had met Joe Tarantine through him. After Archer has her arrested, he visits Mrs Lawrence to tell her the case is closed. Finding her convinced of Galley's innocence, he gives her the fee he had originally accepted from Dowser in order to help pay her legal fees.