-
The Blue Hammer
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Series: Lew Archer, Book 18
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Categories: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery
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As a mysterious fire rages through the hills above a privileged town in Southern California, Lew Archer tracks a missing child who may be the pawn in a marital struggle or the victim of a bizarre kidnapping. What he uncovers amid the ashes is murder - and a trail of motives as combustible as gasoline. The Underground Man is a detective novel of merciless suspense and tragic depth, with an unfaltering insight into the moral ambiguities at the heart of California's version of the American dream.
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When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on the suspiciously suave Frenchman who's run off with his client's girlfriend, it looks like a simple case of alienated affections. Things look different when the mysterious foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good book, great reader
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Lew Archer knew he shouldn't have taken the case, but Alex Kincaid seemed so desperate. Kincaid's loving new bride, Dolly, had just inexplicably walked out on him, leaving Kincaid more than a little fearful for her sanity and her safety. So Archer reluctantly agreed to help Kincaid find his wife.
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4 out of 5 stars
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good entree to the Hard Boiled
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Has Tom Hillman run away from his exclusive reform school, or has he been kidnapped? Are his wealthy parents protecting him or their own guilty secrets? And why does every clue lead Lew Archer to an abandoned Hollywood hotel, where starlets and sailors once rubbed shoulders with tycoons and hustlers? The once-popular palace is now boarded up. But for Archer, it may hold the key to a missing teenager and a hot murder.
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QC problems
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Strictly speaking, Lew Archer is only supposed to dig up the dirt on a rich man's suspicious soon-to-be son-in-law. But in no time at all, Ross Macdonald's private eye is following a trail of corpses from the citrus belt to Mazatlan. And then there is the zebra-striped hearse and its crew of beautiful, sunburned surfers, whose path seems to keep crossing the son-in-law's - and Archer's - in this powerful, fast-paced novel of murder on the California coast.
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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As a mysterious fire rages through the hills above a privileged town in Southern California, Lew Archer tracks a missing child who may be the pawn in a marital struggle or the victim of a bizarre kidnapping. What he uncovers amid the ashes is murder - and a trail of motives as combustible as gasoline. The Underground Man is a detective novel of merciless suspense and tragic depth, with an unfaltering insight into the moral ambiguities at the heart of California's version of the American dream.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 122
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 147
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Lew Archer knew he shouldn't have taken the case, but Alex Kincaid seemed so desperate. Kincaid's loving new bride, Dolly, had just inexplicably walked out on him, leaving Kincaid more than a little fearful for her sanity and her safety. So Archer reluctantly agreed to help Kincaid find his wife.
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4 out of 5 stars
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good entree to the Hard Boiled
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The Far Side of the Dollar
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Strictly speaking, Lew Archer is only supposed to dig up the dirt on a rich man's suspicious soon-to-be son-in-law. But in no time at all, Ross Macdonald's private eye is following a trail of corpses from the citrus belt to Mazatlan. And then there is the zebra-striped hearse and its crew of beautiful, sunburned surfers, whose path seems to keep crossing the son-in-law's - and Archer's - in this powerful, fast-paced novel of murder on the California coast.
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Phoebe Wycherly was missing two months before her wealthy father hired Archer to find her. That was plenty of time for a young girl who wanted to disappear to do so thoroughly—or for someone to make her disappear. And before he could locate the Wycherly girl, Archer had to reckon with the Wycherly woman, Phoebe’s mother, an eerily unmaternal blonde who kept too many residences, had too many secrets, and left too many corpses in her wake.
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As private eye Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the megarich to jazz joints where you can get beaten up between sets, The Moving Target blends sex, greed, misdirected love, and family hatred into an explosive crime novel.
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A good, not great start to a terrific series.
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When Lew Archer stops for a hitchhiker and finds a young man dying of a gunshot wound, he knows he has stumbled into a mess. In a matter of hours he is suspected by the law, hired by a target-shooting trucking magnate, and chasing a hijacked load of hooch and a band of sinners on the loose.
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A classic that still works
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4 out of 5 stars
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Read Lew Archer series first
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When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty--even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain. From the author of The Maltese Falcon.
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Great story, great narration, terrible reccording
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Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward-heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett’s tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness. A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett invented the noir crime novel.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Pacing Quick & Plot was Goldilocks
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Publisher's Summary
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.
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)
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What listeners say about The Blue Hammer
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars
- Karen Nash
- 04-08-07
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.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Laurent Ruisseaux
- 07-26-16
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.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
- Miriam R. Crump
- 04-06-09
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.
1 person found this helpful