Lew Archer

Lew Archer is the main character of the story. He is a private detective who inadvertently gets involved with a very prominent local family when the girl he picks up at the beach goes missing with a bottle of Nembutal pills from his apartment. Since the book is about the search for Laurel Russo and the dark secrets of the Lennox family, the reader does not get the opportunity to find out much about Lew Archer personally. The attentive reader will pick up on the fact that Archer is divorced but other than that there is little personal information available.

Because of the lack of information about Archer it is difficult for the reader to categorize him and think about him in the same ways he thinks about the other characters. The most notable thing about Archer is his sometimes-unprofessional attitude towards his current clients. When he...