Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Detective Lew Archer, but that was before the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer finds himself in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared, leaving behind a bevy of muses, molls, dolls, and dames--each one scrambling for what they think is rightfully theirs.