Blue Hammer [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Ross Macdonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1977

The desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness and only Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art. Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Detective Lew Archer, but that was before the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer find himself smack in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared. He left behind a bevy of muses, molls, dolls, and dames-each one scrambling for what they thought was rightfully theirs.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Lew Archer is hired to find a picture by a second-rate artist who disappeared some 25 years ago. Had he really painted it? Everybody, particularly Lew, keeps feeling certain things in his bones while still older ones surface and two men (art dealers) die now by the same m.o. used in an unresolved murder years before 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 even when you're really not. Any admirer of Macdonald's, and they are legion, should be able to follow that sentence from subject to predicate. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 524 pages
• Publisher: Imprint unknown; Large type edition edition (June 15, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0860430448
• ISBN-13: 978-0860430445
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Last Lew Archer, March 18, 2006

By 

Mack Garner "muskrat" (Maryville, Tn.,) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Blue Hammer: A Lew Archer Novel (Library Edition) (Audio Cassette)

This is, sadly to say, the last book that Kenneth Millar wrote before his eventually fatal illness. It is also, perhaps, the best. I say perhaps because his last fifteen or so books are so good that there is really no way to make any significant distinctions between them.

Like all Lew Archer books, this one features a large number of characters,many of whom are related to or have been involved with each other in in the past that they all wish was dead, but never is. This book, too begins with a small investigation, finding a missing person, but Archer always seems to be the pebble that starts the avalanche. The plot complicates, the pace quickens, the end comes like a Greek tragedy.

The plotting and suspence are wonderful, the setting is beautifully rendered, and the style is perfect. My wife is blind, and i have read many books to her. Macdonald and Tolkien are the best stylists we have run into.

I have read all of Macdonald's books at least twice and some of them several times. Like all the best books, even when you know how they turn out you still can't put them down.

Raymond Chandler is the great model for Macdonald, and, along with Doyle and Sayers, are my favorite mystery writers. Macdonald is better. I would rank him with Faulkner and Hemingway as one of the best American novelists of the Twentieth Century. I know there is a Library of America volume of Chandler. I hope soon we will have Macdonald as well. He deserves it.

Goodbye, Lew. It was an honor to know you.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top Notch, In Depth Mystery, July 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blue Hammer (The Crime club) (Hardcover)

This is the second Ross MacDonald (Lew Archer) book that I have read. This was similar to the first one I read, "The Galton Case", in that it involved a twisted complex murder mystery involving a family and close acquaintances. Prior to reading "The Blue Hammer" I had read some negative reviews of the book. Maybe compared to MacDonald's other "Archer" novels "TBH" is weaker, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought this was a solid mystery and enjoy the "Archer" character very much. The only negative remark I can make about "TBH" is that there are so many characters in it that sometimes it gets confusing keeping up with them all. Having said that I still believe this is a solid piece of work, and for MacDonald's last installment in the "Archer" series I think he did a fine job. Now my problem is deciding which "Archer" book to read next.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An engaging mystery., December 6, 2004

By 

Michael G. "mikefromrochester" (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Blue Hammer (Hardcover)

The Blue Hammer by Ross MacDonald is a tale of two cities. The coastal town of Santa Teresa, California and the isolated desert community of Copper City, Arizona. Chapter 1 finds veteran private eye Lew Archer at the Santa Teresa home of copper magnate Jack Biemeyer and his wife Ruth. He's been hired to locate a potentially valuable painting that is missing from their residence.

It doesn't take long for Archer to establish that the Biemeyer's flower child daughter, Doris, and her art student boyfriend, Fred Johnson, have something to do with the painting's disappearance. But the case takes a much more serious turn when, later that same night, the art dealer who originally sold the painting to Ruth Biemeyer is bludgeoned to death.

This intricately plotted mystery is less a story about stolen artwork or even murder than it is a study of family secrets reaching back over more than a generation. Lost love, jealousy, dysfunctional relationships, homosexuality and substance abuse all play a part in the interesting narrative that unfolds in the pages of this novel. And the ending is a really great one.

Well constructed and compelling, The Blue Hammer is first rate storytelling. Well worth reading.