Author Description

Product Description When a chance encounter makes him a witness to the abduction of a child, private detective Lew Archer can't help but be drawn into the case, pursuing a trail that leads all too quickly to murder. While forest fires rage in the hills around Los Angeles, threatening the homes of some of the city's wealthiest families, Archer unearths a hidden history of failed marriages, runaway children, and a man's life consumed by a search for the father who abandoned him.Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer mysteries rewrote the conventions of the detective novel with their credible, humane hero, and with Macdonald's insight and moral complexity won new literary respectability for the hardboiled genre previously pioneered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. They have also received praise from such celebrated writers as William Goldman, Jonathan Kellerman, Eudora Welty and Elmore Leonard. Review A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were -- Eudora Welty America's greatest crime writer -- Elmore Leonard Ross MacDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books -- James Ellroy About the Author MacDonald served as president of The Mystery Writers of America in 1965, received the Silver Dagger in 1964 and the Gold Dagger in 1965 from The British Crime Writers Association, and in 1981, received The Eye, the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Private Eye Writers of America. From the Inside Flap As a mysterious fire rages through an affluent community in Southern California, Lew Archer tracks a missing--and possibly kidnapped--child and uncovers and entire secret history of wayward parents, wounded offspring, and murder. Along with its merciless suspense, The Underground Man possesses a moral vision as complex as that of a classic Greek tragedy. From AudioFile In this noir mystery, Private Investigator Lew Archer is hired to track down a missing child but becomes embroiled in a baffling forest fire that threatens affluent Southern California communities. Among the ashes, Archer digs up murder and, of course, a list of colorful potential culprits. Tom Parker's reading is impeccable. Characters ranging from a dumb blonde to a mentally challenged middle-aged man are presented with delicate yet distinguishable differences. Even the child's voice is believable, with glimpses of youthful innocence, bravado, and fear. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine--Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine