Dream Town
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4.2 • 143 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Private Investigator and ex-World War II veteran Aloysius Archer heads to Los Angeles, the city where dreams are made and shattered, and is ensnared in a lethal case in this latest thriller in #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci’s Nero Award-winning series.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
David Baldacci’s third Aloysius Archer mystery, set in 1953, paints a dreamy portrait of golden-age Hollywood—until a chilling murder turns it into a nightmare. At first, Baldacci’s World War II veteran turned private eye is reluctant to take on frightened screenwriter Eleanor Lamb’s case. But when she goes missing—and the body of another detective is found in her house—Archer dives into an unpredictable investigation that pits him against mobsters and crooked cops. Baldacci cultivates an immersive sense of the era that feels straight out of a hardboiled detective novel by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but you don’t need to have read them, or the other Archer books, to get into this. He nails the clothes, the cars, and even the food, but it’s his grim understanding of Hollywood sexism that makes the story feel eerily timeless. Dream Town is a really great read from a thriller master.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Baldacci's welcome third outing for PI Aloysius Archer (after 2021's A Gambling Man) takes Archer, a decorated WWII vet who works for a detective agency in Bay Town, Calif., to Los Angeles to celebrate New Year's Eve 1952 with actress and love interest Liberty Callahan. That evening, at a restaurant frequented by such stars as Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx, Callahan introduces Archer to her friend Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter working on a script for Bette Davis. After Lamb learns of Archer's profession, she seeks to hire him because she's gotten middle-of-the-night–hang-up calls, and someone entered her Malibu home and left a bloody knife in her kitchen sink. Lamb's fears for her life seem justified when she disappears. Right after Archer finds an unknown man shot to death in her house, someone bludgeons the gumshoe into unconsciousness. The tension rises as his subsequent investigation places his own life in danger. Baldacci can be a bit overfond of similes and metaphors (ocean breakers hurl "their sound tentacles"), but otherwise solid prose nicely evokes the traditional hard-boiled whodunit. Raymond Chandler fans will be entertained.
