The Barbarous Coast

By: Ross MacDonald

Narrated by: Tom Parker

Length: 7 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

In The Barbarous Coast, Lew Archer's pursuit of a girl who jackknifed too suddenly from high diving to high living leads him to an ex-fighter with an unexplained movie contract, a big-time gambler who died by his own knife, and finally to an answer he would rather not have known.

More mayhem? Try our other Lew Archer mysteries.

©1956 Ross Macdonald (P)1996 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"Tom Parker reads with great skill, shading primarily by accent rather than by tone or volume....This is an excellent presentation of an excellent crime novel." (AudioFile)

Love this!

I'm a fan of the hard-boiled detective, call me nostalgic. MacDonald is a master of it, along with Hammett and Chandler. Barbarous Coast is one of his best for witty dialog, tough-guy private eyes, and hilarious similes. Five stars!

fun and great ride. awesome time piece.

This is a little out of my wheelhouse, but I really did enjoy the narration, the story, and to look back in time. Really well written.

Good as it gets

Wonderful performance of a classic noir mystery. Spare writing with a great private eye, who has great psychological and social insight into the people he meets, which makes him a detective with a sympathetic morality. You will love it.

Not his best

Other than Archer, there was pretty much no one to care about or even be really curious about in terms of character. As usual, it was an interesting plot and not predictable but also not as engaging as many of his others. The performance was excellent.

Good not great

not Ross MacDonald at his best. Performance was good story was ok. It had some great moments but for me at least the conclusion was something of a let down.

Runaway Wife

Classic Archer. Hired to find a runaway wife, Archer stumbles into a past murder, some fresh murders, blackmail , and lots of money.

Another gem

Maybe not as many classic one liners as other Archer tales but a really solid storyline, well developed characters and good narration.

The sexism is wearying but the stories are good

Sometimes it’s hard to believe these McDonald stories from the ‘50s are so old. Everything about them seems up to date — except the grinding sexism. I had no idea that women’s breasts and hips and legs could be so communicative, e.g., “her breasts were bold” and so forth. “Ugly” women who could never hope to get a man, or who would never leave one because God knows she’d never find anyone else.

However, the -isms are pretty superficial; he underestimates neither the female intellect nor her cunning, with complex motivations.

I continue listening to the series primarily because of “Tom Parker” a.k.a. Grover Gardner. I would listen to this guy read a phone book, as the saying used to go. Plus the stories are good. The writing is a little overblown but that I think is part of Lew Archer’s character, the hardboiled dick with a heart la-di-da.

I read the last book out of order without knowing it — The Blue Hammer — and it was a lot less cringe-worthy, so I shall carry on and watch Ross McDonald grow up and out of the cliches.

ridiculous plot, ridiculous stereotypes.

The story drags along ways before coming to an abrupt halt. Seems Millar/McDonald struggled with this novel and its direction. Dialogue was contrite and overbearing. Lew Archer, the protagonist, is a one dimensional tough guy who is comically immune to Traumatic Brain Injuries. The minority stereotypes get old, to include the “N” word thrown around to firm these stereotypes quite a bit, of course there are the dumb blonde everywhere to spice things up. None of the characters have any depth to them.
Definitely not the best work of Mr. McDonald.
I’d skip it.