Lawrence Sanders' McNally's Bluff [Import] [Hardcover]

Vincent Lardo (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd (2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0727861743
• ISBN-13: 978-0727861740
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,002,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read!, September 27, 2005

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lawrence Sanders McNally's Bluff (Archy McNally) (Paperback)

Vincent Lardo continues to write "in the style of" Lawrence Sanders who create the Archy McNally series. Archy McNally is a Palm Beach private investigator who works out of his wealthy father's law offices.

Archy and the Palm Beach A list are invited to the opening of La Maze. Newcomers to the Palm Beach scene, Matthew Hayes, former carnival cannon ball, and his wife Marlena Marvel, are throwing a party to get in with the "right crowd." Hayes has recreated an English maze at his mansion and the party goers pair off to find their way to the center. But the contest begins only after Marlena recreates her famous impression of Venus DeMilo. But alas, most of the contestants grew increasingly frustrated and not only couldn't find the maze center, they couldn't get out.

Following the maze game, fabulous buffet tables awaited the guests. But the hostess couldn't be found. And then the search was on again -- and didn't end until she was found dead, at the center of the maze.

How could she get there past all the contestants? Who killed her? When? Why? Matthew hired Archy on the spot to find answers. But as he digs in, there are only more questions. Then the most promising suspects, those with the best apparent motives, begin to die, and good leads turn to dead ends.

The characters are believable and include those you'll love to love -- and those you'll love to hate. One caution, if you really care, be prepared to take notes and create diagrams to try to keep up with who is sleeping with who -- and who slept with who, but isn't any more.

Armchair Interviews says: Readers who like fast-paced easy reads will enjoy McNally's Bluff. There are plenty of clues, but many of the suspicions the reader will share with Archy will turn out to be unfounded and red herrings.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Archy's still tooling around Palm Beach in that Miata, November 2, 2005

By 

Joseph P. Menta, Jr. (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lawrence Sanders McNally's Bluff (Archy McNally) (Paperback)

After a hiatus of many years, I dipped back into the world of Palm Beach investigator Archy McNally, via "McNally's Bluff", and enjoyed the experience. Now written by Vincent Lardo, this series still feels close enough to the original Lawrence Sanders offerings that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Mr. Lardo was assisting Mr. Sanders from the beginning. In any event, it's all here: the cynical but funny observations about Palm Beach's eccentric denizens, the goofy internal politics at the McNally firm, the on-again/off-again romance (mostly "off" this time) between Archy and Connie, etc., etc. The mystery story is pretty good this time out, too, involving displaced "carny folk" and a big hedge maze. So, in the end, while I'm not usually a fan of the idea of keeping a mystery series going after the original author has departed this mortal coil, why complain in this case? The Archy McNally stories employ a playful, enjoyable, easily produced formula that the right writer or writers can keep delivering as long as people want to see it. And, besides, this one ends with a funny but still kind of serious cliffhanger involving Connie, so there's another reason to pick up the next one!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I'm sorry, but....., June 15, 2010

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G. Svoboda "Mywriter" (Lincoln, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lawrence Sanders McNally's Bluff (Archy McNally) (Paperback)

I don't enjoy bashing any author, because I know how much work is involved in writing a novel.

That said, I was a big, big fan of Lawrence Sanders' Archy McNally series. Sadly, Mr. Lardo misses the mark in his continuation series.

How? In many, many ways.

While an originating author is free to make up his own rules as he goes along. In my opinion, a continuation author is morally bound to keep the basics the same.

He cannot take a policeman/friend, (Al Rogoff) and turn him from a well-spoken policeman into a cop who sprinkles his sentences with "ain't" and totally butchers the English language.

He should know that the Pelican's Simon Pettigrew always would address Archy as "Mr. McNally," and never as "Archy." (If you're going to carry on a man's work, do some research if you haven't cared enough previously to read the first author's books.)

Connie was good enough for Lawrence Sanders, but apparently not for Mr. Lardo.

Maybe I'm nitpicking but Mr. Lardo's A.M. just isn't as interesting as Mr. Sander's A.M. His dialogue isn't as clever. Continuation series books are, in the final analysis, clones of the original books. Mr. Lardo falls short, far short, in this area. None of the characters ring true.

His plots actually are fairly good, but not good enough to make up for his shortcomings. It's only because of my high regard for the Archy McNally series that I read Mr. Lardo's books. Since it's been around six years since the last A.M. books, I'm guessing that others feel as I do. RIP, Archy McNally.