Blue City [Mass Market Paperback]

Ross MacDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1985

He was a son who hadn’t known his father very well.  It was a town shaken by a grisly murder—his father’s murder.  Johnny Weatherly was home from a war and wandering.  When he found out that his father had been assassinated on a street corner and that his father’s seductive young wife had inherited a fortune, he started knocking on doors.  The doors came open, and Johnny stepped into a world of gamblers, whores, drug-dealers, and blackmailers, a place in which his father had once moved freely.  Now Johnny Weatherly was going to solve this murder—by pitting his rage, his courage, and his lost illusions against the brutal underworld that has overtaken his hometown.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[The] American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald.” —New York Times Book Review
 
“Macdonald should not be limited in audience to connoisseurs of mystery fiction.  He is one of a handful of writers in the genre whose worth and quality surpass the limitations of the form.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“Most mystery writers merely write about crime.  Ross Macdonald writes about sin.” —The Atlantic
 
“Without in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either of them.” —Anthony Boucher
 
“[Macdonald] carried form and style about as far as they would go, writing classic family tragedies in the guise of private detective mysteries.” —The Guardian (London)
 
“[Ross Macdonald] gives to the detective story that accent of class that the late Raymond Chandler did.” —Chicago Tribune --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Ross Macdonald’s real name was Kenneth Millar.  Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar returned to the U.S. as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Mystery Writers of Great Britain's Gold Dagger Award.  He died in 1983. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam Books (December 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553225901
• ISBN-13: 978-0553225907
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 3.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,595,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great noir behind a misleading title, October 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blue City: A Lew Archer Novel (Paperback)

The cover of this book contains an inexcusable misprint. Blue City is not a Lew Archer novel. Archer, of course was Ross MacDonald's series character: a hardboiled private eye and first person narrator who revealed much more of his psyche than is typical in the genre. If any Archer fan were to resist returning the book after the disappointing discovery which takes place by reading the first three pages, there is a real treat in store. The twenty two year old hero is refreshing, narrating away with a perception and cultural awareness that is way beyond his years. The novel is great noir with intriguing characters and a well-thought-out story line. Like Hammett, MacDonald painted the seamy, corrupted side of life. Heroes could be tough, brutal, terribly antisocial and very persistent in their quest to right wrongs. Perhaps this is what gave the hardboiled genre such staying power. In today's world, reading this stuff can be almost therapeutic. There were only a handful of basic plots in this type of writing. Don't look for anything new. The delight is in the brush stokes. Very delightful indeed.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett rather than Lew Archer, July 12, 2000

By 

Unique ViewPoint (Gaithersburg, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue City (Paperback)

This book is reminiscent of Dashiell's Hammett novels such as "Red Harvest" or "The Dain Curse." Adjectives such as "hard-boiled" apply to the hero as well as the villains. The hero in Blue City (like Hammett's Continental Op) accomplish the impossible because they have crossed over the line at times into murder. Yet somehow the hero is not corrupted even while living in the middle of corruption. The style is choppy and the action is jumpy. It makes one wish for smoother connections between scenes. The book is almost too abbreviated. The characters are not developed beyond what is needed for the plot line. As a result, everyone seems hard-nosed, cold-blooded and lacking in humanity.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Early MacDonald crime novel: brutal, June 6, 2006

By 

Bomojaz (South Central PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue City (Paperback)

This early, pre-Lew Archer, Ross MacDonald crime novel is all about big-city corruption, and is one of the most violent novels MacDonald ever wrote. Johnny Weather comes home after the war and learns that his father, one-time mayor, had been shot dead about two years earlier. As he begins to delve beneath the surface, Weather discovers a decayed city government and a crooked police force. He's a hard-headed guy, though, and not afraid of getting roughed up: "Why don't you sock me some more, Hanson. There's no danger in it. I'm handcuffed," he says at one point. The book shows little of the superb character development found in the Archer novels, and a lot of it reads like a teenage-action fantasy story. Weather becomes more and more impossible to believe as the story unfolds; his worst defect might be his preachiness: he lectures the killer of his father about mistaking political assassination for justifiable homicide, for example. The writing is hard-boiled, though (MacDonald was still very much writing in the shadows of Hammett and Chandler), and the story flies by. Better things were yet to come.