Customer Reviews

Blue Hammer

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Ross Macdonald is my second favorite mystery writer. He writes wonderfully, where you are drawn right into the story, and you find yourself unable to put the book down. Everyone of his books are excellent, all set California with stories set about 20 yrs back in time, so you are captivated reading what has happened to these people. Great mystery reading.

THE BLUE HAMMER is the last case for Lew Archer, one of the most elegant of the hard-boiled detectives.
Richard Chantry vanished from his home in Santa Teresa in 1950. A woman buys a portrait of an unknown woman, but the painting is stolen and Lew Archer is hired to find the missing artwork reputed to be by Richard Chantry. His wife maintains the painting is a fake, but everyone involved has deep connections and a stake in the out-come of the investigation.
Years of silence, then evidence of murder escape the shadows to haunt the living.
The story begins slow as the tension and questions build, but the conclusion if a let down after the skillful plotting.
Nash Black, whose books are available on Kindle editions.
Writing as a Small BusinessHaintsSins of the Fathers

I greatly enjoyed all of the Lew Archer novels. The reviews I have read here says more that I can say about TBH, but there is one comment I want to make. The title of the book, The Blue Hammer, is the most innovative title I have ever seen in my long years. Archer has just made love to someone in the story and she is sleeping, and he is awake. He turns to study her in repose, and sees the vein pulsing in her temple like "A Blue Hammer". Fantastic!!!

Lew Archer is hired by a troubled couple to get a painting back that had been stolen from them. The painting may or may not be genuine and was painted by an artist who may or may not be dead. Add an addicted daughter, an earnest young man, an aged beauty, a drunken father and a strange cult and you have an Archer mystery.

One of the Archer strengths is the way he draws complex characters, rather than complex plots. One of the weaknesses of this book is that the vice is versa. This is one of the most complex Archer plots that I have read. Without the bulk of pages to fill it out, the characters are correspondingly weaker.

This is not to say that it lacks entertainment value nor that there are not high points (the character of Fred is noteworthy). This is simply to sayt that there are better Macdonald novels out there.