The Far Side of the Dollar

Lew Archer is called to a facility for disturbed youngsters from rich families to locate Tom Hillman, who has escaped after barely a week.

Once home, it is plain that tensions in the Hillman family will make finding what has happened to Tom difficult as both parents are wary about discussing the events that led to their son's committal.

Hillman is a self-made man who rose to command in the navy during World War 2 and had only married his frigid wife Elaine for the sake of her money.

From Lieutenant Bastian, who is assigned to the murder case, Archer learns that the husband has escaped in a car with Idaho license plates.

Archer takes Stella to meet Tom in Santa Monica and they all return home, where Bastian arrives to reveal that Carol had really been stabbed with the same knife that killed Harley and that Hillman had purchased it.

The Far Side of the Dollar is somewhat formulaic in dealing with the hunt for a missing son while functioning in addition as an indictment of the corroding influence of wealth.

[5] The title adapts a remark at the start of the 11th chapter that the "guys and dolls pursuing the rapid buck hated to be reminded of what was waiting on the far side of the last dollar".

The investigator himself sees through the "comfortable surfaces [that] cover histories of self-deception and the plastic morality of the marketplace" where "quarrelling adults and disoriented children are the tell-tale symptoms of the social chaos" with which Archer is asked to deal.