The reader is presented with three works by famous masters of the American detective story: “The Grave in the Mountains” by Ross MacDonald, “The Ghost Woman” by William Irish and “A Woman with a Dark Past” by Ellery Queen. The novels, despite the originality of each of them, are united by the same author's technique: the action in them is focused on the search for a woman who, by chance, finds herself in a whirlpool of events.