The Blue Hammer

By: Ross MacDonald

Narrated by: Tom Parker

Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

The era is the 1970s; the setting is Southern California. Lew Archer has been hired to retrieve a stolen canvas reputed to be the work of the celebrated Richard Chantry, who vanished in 1950 from his home in Santa Teresa. It is the portrait of an unknown woman.

Suddenly, Lew finds himself drawn into a web of family complications and masked brutalities stretching back 50 years, through a world where money talks or buys silence, where social prominence is a murderous weapon, where, behind the plausible facades of homes not quite broken but badly bent, a heritage of lies and evasions pushes troubled men and women deeper into trouble. And as he pursues the Chantry portrait, and the larger mystery of Richard Chantry, Archer himself is shaken as never before, by a woman.

More mayhem? Try our other Lew Archer mysteries.

©1996 Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Trust (P)1996 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"[The] American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, [is] brought to its zenith by Macdonald." (New York Times Book Review)
"Tom Parker shows his talent as he captures the emotions of Archer, as well as the secondary characters, while maintaining the tempo of the story." (AudioFile)

Blue Hammer

Another great Archer story with a multitude of suspects. Archer is hired to find a stolen painting and finds murder, two recent and one decades old.

almost epic

Pretty epic story involving sooooo many people in a web of constant lies, covering about 3 decades. Ross definitely could turn a phrase. I copied many classic lines.

Good Story

I did enjoy listening to this but sometimes I had to really think about the characters and where they fit together. Good ending.

Not MacDonald's Best But Still Classic

MacDonald's running plot of the deeply-buried past returning to haunt the present becomes somewhat predictable after so many previous novels but his poetic style make this book well worth the read, or even multiple reads.

McDonald still has it!

20 years ago I was introduced to Ross McDonald and have read every book he wrote. It is a great pleasure to listen to his fine work. The reader does a fantastic job getting all of the emotions through to you. This book is one you can't stop listing to until it over.

Lew Archer Finds Love

While investigating an implausible and unbelievable morass of human deceit and depravity spanning generation in the world of art, our hero falls in love with a young lady journalist whose pluck and intelligence match his own! This a worthy final entry for Ross Macdonald's legendary private detective.

Extraordinary!

This is Ross McDonald’s final book. It is complex and fascinating. I am very grateful to McDonald for tying things together in the last two chapters, yet providing for an unexpected and shocking ending. Wow. Brilliant.

When You’re Way Ahead of the Detective

It’s hard to believe Ross McDonald was the darling of the critics in the late 60’s and early 70’s. His early, pulpy novels are entertaining and fast moving. The more boring he got, the more the critics loved him. The Blue Hammer is a perfect example of the formula that defined his moment in the sun: talky, slow, and full of convoluted family entanglements stretching into the past. Most of all, tortured similes that would garner a D in Creative Writing 101. What makes this novel an egregious example is that the obvious solution is clear halfway through the book. McDonald lays on the clues with a trowel, and the reader then spends half the story waiting for the protagonist to catch up. McDonald is all but forgotten now, while his obvious inspiration, Raymond Chandler, lives on.