Port Hazard (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 7) [Hardcover]

Loren D. Estleman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2004

A Spur Award-winning Author

Hired killers are being sent, one by one, to Montana Territory after Page Murdock. Murdock doesn't know why someone wants him out of the way, but he knows where they're coming from. Thus begins Murdock's descent into a hell more decadent, corrupt, and dangerous than any even he has ever seen - San Francisco's Barbary Coast.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Western writer and crime novelist Estleman (White Desert, etc.), winner of both Shamus and Spur Awards, is at the top of his game in this latest installment in a series featuring Page Murdock, deputy U.S. marshal. Murdock may be a peace officer, but there's little real peace when the cynical, crusty deputy is around. Together with his boss, Judge Harlan Blackthorne, a hardcase jurist who never met an outlaw he wouldn't hang, he serves up swift justice in the Montana Territory in the 1880s. Murdock is puzzled by assassins repeatedly trying to kill him when he is minding his own business, but the judge discovers the motive. A shady conspiracy called the Sons of the Confederacy is plotting to renew the Civil War, and their first step is to murder prominent lawmen and other public officials. The judge, unconcerned about jurisdictional niceties, sends Murdock to San Francisco, the home of the conspirators, to root them out before their aim improves. Murdock deputizes his own backup by hiring a black ex-soldier named Beecher, who is armed with a fearsome Le Mat pistol that fires shotgun shells. Murdock and Beecher find themselves awash in the filth and corruption of San Francisco's Barbary Coast, surrounded by gamblers, drunks, vigilantes, whores, petty thugs, crooked politicians and the deadly Chinese gangs called tongs. Their investigation reveals much more than they expected, including an undercover Pinkerton detective, a dwarf with an iron ball on a chain attached to the stump of his arm and a dead man who isn't really dead. Snappy dialogue, fast-paced action, colorful characters and plenty of bullets, booze and blood make this western crime drama a wicked romp through the legendary gutters of the Barbary Coast.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock usually roams the open trails and cow towns of the West in his dead-or-alive search for outlaws and miscreants. Federal judge Harlan Blackthorne has a different venue for Murdock's next assignment: California's Barbary Coast. A militant wing of the Sons of the Confederacy, located in San Francisco, is assassinating anyone who impedes its efforts to revive interest in secession from the union. Murdock is chosen to cut off the splinter group's head by eliminating its leadership. With former slave and ex-Union soldier Edward Anderson Beecher as his right hand, Murdock settles into San Francisco, where he discovers that it isn't the whores, drug addicts, and Chinese gangs of the Barbary Coast who hold the most significant threat to his mission and his life; rather, it's the politicians, captains of industry, and other "respectable" citizens. Murdock has survived because he's tough; this time he'll have to be as cunning as his prey. Estleman, at home in many genres, here mixes noir and the Old West, as Murdock literally walks off the trail and onto the mean streets. A wildly entertaining read with great period atmosphere and dialogue. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 379 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (May 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786263237
• ISBN-13: 978-0786263233
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,119,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Since the appearance of his first novel in 1976, Loren D. Estleman has written more than 65 books and hundreds of short stories and articles. Alone (Dec 2009, Forge Books) is the second in a new series about L.A. film detective Valentino, and features Greta Garbo.

To kick off the new decade, Estleman's The Book of Murdock (eighth in the U.S. Deputy Marshal Page Murdock series) will appear in March and, to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of Private Detective Amos Walker, The Left-Handed Dollar will publish in December. It's the 20th novel in the award-winning series.

An authority on both criminal history and the American West, Estleman has been called the most critically acclaimed author of his generation. He has been nominated for the National Book Award and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award.

He has received seventeen national writing awards: four Shamuses from the Private Eye Writers of America, five Spurs from the Western Writers of America, two American Mystery Awards from Mystery Scene Magazine, two Outstanding Mystery Writer of the Year awards from Popular Fiction Monthly, two Stirrup Awards for outstanding articles in the Western Writers of America magazine, The Roundup, and three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1987, the Michigan Foundation of the Arts presented him with its award for literature. In 1997, the Michigan Library Association named him the recipient of the Michigan Author's Award. In 2007, Nicotine Kiss was named a Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.

Estleman graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Journalism. On April 27, 2002, EMU presented him with an honorary doctorate in letters. He left the job market in 1980 to write full time. He lives in Michigan and is married to writer Deborah Morgan. For more information, please visit his website: www.lorenestleman.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner in a great series!, May 19, 2004

By 

M. Dog (Everywhere and Nowhere) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Port Hazard (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 7) (Hardcover)

After reading this book and loving it, as I do all the Estleman westerns, I decided to write a review and was surprised to see that mine would be the first review. If this indicates a lack of readership, that is a true shame because Loren D. Estleman is one of the finest writers working in fiction today.

This book is another entry in the western series starring Page Murdock, Deputy U.S. Marshall from the Montana Territory. In this installment, Murdock is sent to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco not many years after the end of the Civil War. His mission is to disrupt the activities of The Sons of the Confederacy, a dangerous fringe group that threatens the peaceful re-union of the states.

The Page Murdoch series works on a couple of different levels; the first being that of a well told, beautifully paced action novel. On another level, Estleman's westerns work as impeccably researched historical novels, a level in which this novel is particularly strong. Estleman brings the incredibly dangerous bustle of the Coast to life in these pages. From the criminal rhyming slang and gang warfare to the oily seduction of the opium dens, this is a place that nearly glitters with danger. When Murdock walks its streets, Estleman's expert prose makes the hair on the back of the reader's neck stand on end. Estleman's work is always sprinkled with historical detail, whether it be Murdock's beloved 5 shot Deane-Adams English revolver or the style of dress and manners.

And, of course, Estleman's westerns also work as mainstream literature. There is an unsentimental quality about his writing that is very refreshing, as well as elements of a very dry humor. The plotting is done with a master's touch, and every Page Murdoch adventure is backed by a brilliant storyline. In addition, nearly every page is sparked with a clever and concise turn of phrase that brings things in a fresh way to the reader's mind (much like Shakespeare).

Finally, the characters always jump right off the page and mark a place in the reader's memory. This novel is no exception. My favorite characters in this novel were Hodge, a dwarf bouncer that has a ball and chain were his hand used to be, who has to use a ladder to hop up on the bar, where he enforces decorum; and F'an Chu'an (Fat John) the powerful, menacing head man of the Chinese Tong gang.

To sum up, I truly hope I am not the last reader that will review this work. Estleman deserves to be widely read. --Mykal Banta

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A window into the dangers of old San Francisco, August 29, 2007

By 

PATRICK OHANNIGAN (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Port Hazard (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 7) (Hardcover)

For a 19th-century Deputy U.S. Marshal in what was then the Montana Territory, Page Murdock gets around. In "Port Hazard," the seventh book of his Murdock series, novelist Loren Estleman throws his hero into old-time San Francisco. The result is an exhilarating read marred only in a few places by self-conscious reliance on the colorful criminal dialect of what was (before the earthquake of 1906) California's version of the Barbary Coast.

Although not as obviously movie-ready as Estleman's Nicotine Kiss: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Novels), "Port Hazard" reads like a film noir version of Lawrence Kasdan's sunny western, "Silverado." Kasdan worked with a cowboy, a little barkeep, and a racially integrated posse, just as Estleman does here, but Kasdan played his story in a major key, and Estleman writes in the literary equivalent of C sharp minor. Apart from Marshal Murdock and his reluctant sidekick, former Buffalo soldier Edward Beecher, Estleman's gallery includes a reformed prostitute, a one-armed dwarf, a professional gambler, a sinister politician, a self-ordained Christian militant, and a Chinese gang leader whom Westerners call "Fat John" because most of them can't pronounce "F'an Chu'an."

Estleman draws each of these characters with loving attention to detail, and each has a memorable idiosyncracy. Murdock, for example, favors a five-shot revolver of British manufacture rather than the six-shot Colt more common on the frontier. Beecher has a saber scar that he didn't get from fighting Indians. F'an Chu'an has a cleft palate. Axel Hodge keeps the peace with a ball and chain where his right hand would be if he had one. The ribbon around Nan Feeny's neck is a plot point rather than a mere decoration, and the self-ordained minister hates ice cream parlors. You get the idea.

Murdock's assignment is to drive a wedge between the militant and moderate wings of an organization called the Sons of the Confederacy. Tellingly, the moderates are, for the most part, actual veterans of the Civil War who gather for reunions in Virginia, while the militants are wannabes who were too young to serve the lost cause that now makes them hot-eyed along the Barbary Coast. To accomplish his mission, Murdock must cross paths with the "baby Rebels," and also with gangs known as The Tong and The Hoodlums.

Estleman makes the violence in his story plausible rather than operatic. Unholstered pistols are often but not always fired. The author knows his way around library microfiche catalogs, so one gets the impression that poor sections of San Francisco in 1883 looked, smelled, and sounded exactly as described here, with homicide shrouded by fog and muttonchopped city fathers who either look the other way or rail against "bludgeoners, blacklegs, swindlers, gamblers, smugglers, and uncertified celestials."

Apart from the sometimes-stilted dialog that Estleman admits in an afterward was unchracteristically hard for him to write, Port Hazard wears its meticulous research lightly. Among other things, readers are treated to factoids about the origin of the word "dive" (as a slang derivative of the divans on which opium smokers would pass out), and the peculiar influence of Oscar Wilde on certain American criminals.

I enjoyed this book. If you like westerns, crime stories, or fiction written with zest, you probably will, too.

4.0 out of 5 stars A Different Kind of Western, July 20, 2010

By 

Plutarch - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Port Hazard (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 7) (Hardcover)

Estleman brings a modern sensibility to the western format. His heroes are flawed, his villains love their mothers, and the girls are far from pure. He takes the western story places it has seldom been before, in this case into the opium dens of old San Francisco's Barbary Coast. Few western writers have Estleman's command of the language, inventiveness or creative plotting. All of that aside, the stories are a great pleasure to read, and this is one of his best.