In this masterful Macdonald mystery, the desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness, and only Lew Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art.
The era is the 1970s, the settin, Southern California. Private investigator 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, Archer finds himself drawn into a web of family complications and masked brutalities stretching back fifty years, through a world where money both talks or buys silence; where social prominence is a murderous weapon; where, behind the plausible façades 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.
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"Lots of twists and turns in this yarn! And it is just over 200 pages, so it goes quickly! Maybe too quickly, as I got confused a few times over who done what to whom! But well worth the time! " — Donald (4 out of 5 stars)
"Lots of twists and turns in this yarn! And it is just over 200 pages, so it goes quickly! Maybe too quickly, as I got confused a few times over who done what to whom! But well worth the time! "
“[Grover Gardner] shows his talent as he captures the emotions of Archer, as well as the secondary characters, while maintaining the tempo of the story. [Gardner’s] tenor voice adapts well for the voices of the female characters in the novel.”
“[The] American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, [is] brought to its zenith by Macdonald.”
“Archer solves crimes with the instincts of a psychologist and the conscience of a priest, and the mid-twentieth-century Southern California setting is a wonderful ride in the Wayback Machine.”
“Everybody, particularly Lew, keeps feeling certain things in his bones…and all of this business entails illegitimacy, impostures, frauds, false identities, cover-ups, paraplotted with Macdonald’s literally stunning complexity so that you’re with him.”
" I read this because of Andrew's review. Interesting and entertaining. I have read few mysteries so I don't have anything to compare it to. I didn't figure out who the murderer was until Archer spelled out the crime. "
" If you like Chandler, you'll like Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer books; I'd recommend the whole series. "
" Lots of twists and turns in this yarn! And it is just over 200 pages, so it goes quickly! Maybe too quickly, as I got confused a few times over who done what to whom! But well worth the time! "
" Page turning read. Really well done. Sort of falls apart in the end with maybe one twist too many. "
" Lew Archer finds more creative ways to describe things than Guy Vanderhaeghe, which is saying a lot. "
" Fairly good LA-noir type mystery, but definately not one of his better ones. Still, great plot twists at the end. "
" Can people really kill someone and assume their identity without no one catching on? In Ross MacDonald's world it seems to happen all the time. I love Archer, but this one was not one of my favorites. "
" An enjoyable read, and it definitely took me a while to spot the twist, it's a good one! "
" Really like the series "
" Complex plot and tight writing. Very enjoyable RossMc. "
" Pretty good, complex mystery with a likeable hero. Archer gets kind of annoying sometimes. "
" A few murders, blunt object not mentioned, blue or otherwise. "
" The most complicated Lew Archer I've yet read. Some fiendish twists, the impact of which is lessened somewhat by two chapters of exposition before the conclusion. "
Ross Macdonald (1915–1983) was the pen name of Kenneth Millar. For over twenty years he lived in Santa Barbara and wrote mystery novels about the fascinating and changing society of his native state. He is widely credited with elevating the detective novel to the level of literature with his compactly written tales of murder and despair. His works have received awards from the Mystery Writers of America and of Great Britain, and his book The Moving Target was made into the movie Harper in 1966. In 1982 he was awarded the Eye Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Private Eye Writers of America.
Grover Gardner (a.k.a. Tom Parker) is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.
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