The Blue Hammer (1975) by Ross Macdonald
GoodReads meta-data is 270 pages, rated 4.0 by 2,330 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
DNA: SoCal.
Verdict: Chapeaux!
Tagline: Families divided!
Archer is hired to recover a stolen painting but that quickly develops into something far more deadly. Thirty years ago in an Arizona desert the painter’s illegitimate half brother was beaten to death, nearly beyond identification. Ten years ago, at the height of his creativity and sales, the painter himself disappeared. Presumed now to be dead. There will be more deaths to follow in the here and now, unless Archer can put the jigsaw puzzle together working from the edges inward.
When reading an Archer novel, if a drunken blowhard boasts of his long ago high school football triumphs, pay attention because somewhere later that fact will fit into the plot. When a clerk at a liquor store hesitates in replying to a question about the shop next door, the silence says it all. When comments about how aging changes a person are made that is thread to follow.
There are some of the signature features of Ross Macdonald’s Archer stories. An archeological murder in the dim past. A few mixed up youngsters in their twenties. Half-truths, lies, and secrets. But a new twist is that Archer is falling in love with a newspaper woman, and that makes him vulnerable, and confused.
The title comes late in the piece and is worth waiting for because it heralded the end for Archer himself in the 18th and last of the Archers.
I read it first in the year of publication and it stayed with me.
I read the One (1) star reviews to remind myself why the aliens will never make contact with humanity.
I re-read while we spend a long weekend at the Taronga Park Zoo retreat with a harbour view room.