The Underground Man--Ross MacDonald

Ross MacDonald's work seems a little dated now, what with all the longhairs, surfers and druggies wandering around Los Angeles, but it's also classic like Chandler. In this installment, Lew Archer goes out one morning to feed the pigeons and gets all caught up in the neighbor's crap, including missing fathers, missing mothers, missing children and a wildfire up in the mountains. Turns out that if you bury a body as the fire approaches you can later go back, dig it up, and it will be untouched. Take that, CSI!