The ivory grin - Ross MacDonald

Traveling from sleazy motels to stately seaside manors, The Ivory Grin is one of Lew Archer's most violent and macabre cases ever.
A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew
Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry.
Archer
can tell he's being fed a line, but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts
the case. He tracks the wayward maid to a ramshackle motel in a seedy, run-down small
town, but finds her dead in her tiny room, with her throat slit from ear to ear.
Archer digs deeper into the case and discovers a web of deceit and intrigue, with
crazed number-runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls, and a golden-boy
shipping heir who's gone mysteriously missing.