See buying choices for this item to see if it's one of the millions that are eligible for Amazon Prime.

35 used & new from $0.12

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

See all product images
See 1 customer image

Tell the Publisher! I�d like to read this book on Kindle Don�t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

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

by Loren D. Estleman (Author) "I was killing a conductor on the Northern Pacific between Butte and Garrison when my orders changed..." (more)
Key Phrases: substantial citizens, double eagle, San Francisco, Slop Chest, Sons of the Confederacy (more...)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.

9 new from $3.58 25 used from $0.12 1 collectible from $24.95

Also Available in:	List Price:	Our Price:	Other Offers:
Hardcover (Bargain Price)
Mass Market Paperback (1st)	$6.99	$6.99	46 used & new from $0.01
Hardcover (Thorndike Large Print)	$27.95	$27.95	15 used & new from $0.91

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Stamping Ground (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 2)

by Loren D. Estleman

5.0 out of 5 stars (1) $5.99

The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion

by Loren D. Estleman

4.2 out of 5 stars (4) $5.99

The Stranglers (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 4)

by Loren D. Estleman

4.0 out of 5 stars (1)

City of Widows (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 5)

by Loren D. Estleman

5.0 out of 5 stars (2)

Billy Gashade: An American Epic

by Loren D. Estleman

4.7 out of 5 stars (9) $5.99

› Explore similar items

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.

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (January 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0765301903
ISBN-13: 978-0765301901
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,497,726 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category: (What's this?)
#62 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Authors, A-Z > ( E ) > Estleman, Loren

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
I was killing a conductor on the Northern Pacific between Butte and Garrison when my orders changed. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
substantial citizens, double eagle

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
San Francisco, Slop Chest, Sons of the Confederacy, Nan Feeny, Bella Union, F'an Chu'an, Sid the Spunk, Tom Tulip, United States, Owen Goodhue, Cap'n Dan, Captain Dan, White Peacock, Daniel Webster Wheelock, Fat John, Lee Yung Hay, Axel Hodge, Fan Chu'an, New York, Gold Creek, Barbary Coast, Horatio Flinders, Edward Anderson Beecher, Page Murdock, Sailor's Rest

New!
Concordance | Text Stats

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 7 books:

The Great Depression (World History Series) by Jacqueline Farrell in Back Matter
Never Street (The Amos Walker Series #12) by Loren D. Estleman in Front Matter
Judgment Day by James F. David on page 238
Dictionary of the Underworld (Wordsworth Collection) by Eric Partridge in Back Matter
White Slave (Signet) by Richard Owen on page 234

See all 7 books this book cites

6 books cite this book:

The Undertaker's Wife by Loren D. Estleman in Front Matter
Writing the Popular Novel by Loren D. Estleman in Front Matter
The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion by Loren D. Estleman in Front Matter
Nicotine Kiss: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Novels) by Loren D. Estleman in Front Matter
Little Black Dress (Peter Macklin, The Nine-to-Five Killer, Book 5) by Loren D. Estleman in Front Matter

See all 6 books citing this book

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	65% buy the item featured on this page: Port Hazard (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 7) 4.7 out of 5 stars (3)
	18% buy Stamping Ground (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 2) 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) $5.99
	11% buy The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion 4.2 out of 5 stars (4) $5.99
	6% buy White Desert (Page Murdock, US Deputy Marshall, Book 6) 4.3 out of 5 stars (3) $26.95

Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

(What's this?)

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.

loren d estleman(1)

san francisco(1)

western(1)

See all 5 tags...

Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search

No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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

Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

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	Mykal Banta (Boynton Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

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)

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.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

4.0 out of 5 stars A bit long, but entertaining, February 20, 2008

By	David W. Nicholas (Montrose, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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

Loren D. Estleman is primarily known to me as a detective novelist. His series following the adventures of Amos Walker is one of the longer-running series in the detective genre, and one of the better ones that hasn't broken out to the bestseller lists. Estleman is an old-school detective novelist: he uses metaphor and simile profusely, and creates a plot that is full of twists and turns, and comes with a large helping of violence, danger, and suspense.

This current entry is from a separate series I wasn't aware of. I knew Estleman did Westerns, but I didn't know that he had a series of them separate from his detective novels. The series apparently follows the adventures of Page Murdock, a U.S. Deputy Marshal from somewhere in the Plains states. Here, he winds up in San Francisco, backed up by a black train conductor turned ersatz deputy, hot on the trail of various neo-Confederates who wish to restart the Civil War and this time win. For whatever reason they start this campaign by trying twice to kill Murdock himself, and he takes exception to this.

This is a good book, but it's interesting to compare this with his detective novels. Other than the fact that Murdock shoots more people than Walker does, this is essentially an Amos Walker novel, with everyone wearing boots. There's also a fascinating side to the story in that some of the minor characters use a patois of street lingo that's long died out, and which at one time was largely used by thugs and street criminals in various towns, but apparently especially San Francisco.

I enjoyed this book pretty well, and would recommend it as a good diversion.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 3 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; }

Customer Discussions

Beta (What's this?)

New! See all customer communities, and bookmark your communities to keep track of them.

This product's forum (0 discussions)

	Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
	No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight

Start a new discussion

Topic:

First post:

Receive e-mail when new posts are made

Prompts for sign-in

[Cancel]

Guidelines

Active discussions in related forums

Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
mystery Ian Rankin's The Falls: #12 in his DI John Rebus Series	362	37 seconds ago
mystery Mystery Community Off Topic & Introduction Thread	242	46 minutes ago
mystery Please help an insomniac who needs mystery recommendations, Vol. II	7709	1 hour ago
mystery Need name of book	1	11 hours ago
mystery What would you say to your favoriet author?	35	19 hours ago
western Westerns you'd like to see on DVD.	257	19 hours ago
western Great memorable scenes in Westerns.	33	2 days ago

The Western community

Latest activity 3 hours ago

4,666 customers have contributed 4,104 products, 243 discussions and more...

› Explore the community

The San Francisco community

Latest activity 18 hours ago

1,370 customers have contributed 1,102 products, 56 lists & guides and more...

› Explore the community

The Mystery community

Latest activity 30 minutes ago

20,163 customers have contributed 20,127 products, 433 discussions and more...

› Explore the community

Explore more

› See all Customer Communities

› Your communities

Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)

Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.

› See featured Amapedia.com articles

Listmania!

Some Rip-Roaring Westerns: A list by Ophella Paige
Some Western Bestsellers that are Fast on the Draw: A list by Mindy Adams
Some Gun-Shootin' Westerns: A list by Ophella Paige

Create a Listmania! list

Look for Similar Items by Category

Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Westerns
Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Authors, A-Z > ( E ) > Estleman, Loren
Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

SpaFeatures: Free Shipping

Get free shipping on all SpaFeatures orders of $50 or more. See new items from SpaFeatures here.

›Shop SpaFeatures now

Big Savings in Books

Find great titles at fantastic prices in our Bargain Books Store.

Summer Reading for Kids & Teens

Discover everything from beach reads and board books to teen romance and action-adventure series in Summer Reading for Kids & Teens. And, check off the kids' required reading lists in our Summer School Reading Store.